In computing, data integrity refers to maintaining and assuring the accuracy and consistency of data over its entire life-cycle, and is an especially important feature of a database or RDBMS system. Data warehousing and business intelligence in general demand the accuracy, validity and correctness of data despite hardware failures, software bugs or human error. Data that has integrity is identically maintained during any operation, such as transfer, storage or retrieval.
All characteristics of data, including business rules, rules for how pieces of data relate, dates, definitions and lineage must be correct for its data integrity to be complete. When functions operate on the data, the functions must ensure integrity. Examples include transforming the data, storing history and storing metadata.
Read more about Data Integrity: Databases, Data Storage
Famous quotes containing the words data and/or integrity:
“This city is neither a jungle nor the moon.... In long shot: a cosmic smudge, a conglomerate of bleeding energies. Close up, it is a fairly legible printed circuit, a transistorized labyrinth of beastly tracks, a data bank for asthmatic voice-prints.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market.
He has no time to be anything but a machine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)