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Data Science & Analytics vocabulary · Data Pipelines and Warehousing

Schema

Meaning in data science & analytics, with examples

/ˈskiːmə/nounCommon term

In data science & analytics, schema means: The structure of a database or dataset: which tables exist, which columns they have, the data type of each column and how the tables relate to each other.

In Turkish: şema, veri şeması

How it is used

You design, change or document a schema, and a schema change upstream can break pipelines and dashboards. In many warehouses a schema is also a folder-like group of tables, as in 'the marketing schema'. The plural is usually schemas.

Example sentences

  1. The app team renamed a column without telling us, and the schema change broke the pipeline.

  2. All the cleaned tables are in the analytics schema.

Common collocations

  • database schema
  • schema change
  • star schema
  • document the schema
  • data warehouseA central database designed for analysis that stores cleaned, structured data from many systems, such as sales, marketing and finance, often over many years.
  • primary keyA column, or a set of columns, whose value is unique for every row in a table and is used to identify each row, such as an order ID.
  • data dictionaryA document or table that describes every field in a dataset: its name, meaning, data type, allowed values, source and owner.
  • granularityThe level of detail in data, meaning what one row represents, for example one row per order, per customer per day or per store per month.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Data Pipelines and Warehousing

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