Data Record

A Data Record is a data item that represents a tuple (of data attributes according to some metadata).

• AKA: Data Tuple, Structured Data Item.
• Context:
  • It can (often) be a member of a Data Record Set.
  • It can range from being a Single-Field Data Record to being a Multi-Field Data Record, depending on the number of Data Record Attributes.
  • It can range from being a Manual Data Record to being a Computerized Data Record.
  • It can range from being a Fully-Structured Data Record to being a Semi-Structured Data Record to being an Unstructured Data Record.
  • It can range from being a Sparsely-Populated Data Record to being a Densely-Populated Data Record.
  • It can range from being a Categorized Data Record to being an Uncategorized Data Record.
  • It can have a Data Record Schema (be mapped to a Data Structure?).
  • It can have a Record Identifier (and be a Data Resource if it is uniquely identifiable).
  • It can have a Data Record Relationship with another Data Record.
  • It can belong to a Data Record Set.
  • It can be associated to one or more Data Provenance Records.
  • It can (often) be a Database Member.
  • …
• Example(s):
  • A Data Tuple, exemplified by (3.5, 'A', True, -2).
  • A Vector Record, such as: {"x": 1.0, "y": 9.3, "z": 3.4} in JSON format.
  • an Entity Record (whose reference is some entity) such as a: person record, protein record, product record, citation record, x-ray record.
  • A Concept Record.
  • An Event Record.
  • a Semi-Structured Data Record, such as an HTML page.
  • a Learning Record (training record or testing record).
  • a Task Record, that represents some rask, such as a business activity, etc.
  • a Concept Class Record (Represent a Concept Class), etc.
  • a Ground Fact Record that can be associated with either True or False.
  • a Database Record, such as a Relational Database Row.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • A Database Table, ...
  • A Text Item, which lacks structured attributes and metadata.
  • An Image File, like a JPEG photo, which, while it may contain metadata, does not represent data as a tuple of attributes.
  • A Data Point, such as the number 42, which lacks context or relational attributes that form a structured record.
  • A Physical Object, such as a book or a chair, which cannot be directly represented as a structured set of data attributes within a database schema.
• See: Memory Record, Data Rule, Object Class, Computer File, Storage Record.

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References

2013

• (Wikipedia, 2013) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_(computer_science)#science Retrieved:2013-11-30.
  • In computer science, records (also called tuples, structs, or compound data) are among the simplest data structures. A record is a value that contains other values, typically in fixed number and sequence and typically indexed by names. The elements of records are usually called fields or members.

    For example, a date could be stored as a record containing a numeric year field, a month field represented as a string, and a numeric day-of-month field. As another example, a Personnel record might contain a name, a salary, and a rank. As yet another example, a Circle record might contain a center and a radius. In this instance, the center itself might be represented as a Point record containing x and y coordinates.

    Records are distinguished from arrays by the fact that their number of fields is typically fixed, each field has a name, and that each field may have a different type.

    A record type is a data type that describes such values and variables. Most modern computer languages allow the programmer to define new record types. The definition includes specifying the data type of each field and an identifier (name or label) by which it can be accessed. In type theory, product types (with no field names) are generally preferred due to their simplicity, but proper record types are studied in languages such as System F-sub. Since type-theoretical records may contain first-class function-typed fields in addition to data, they can express many features of object-oriented programming.

    Records can exist in any storage medium, including main memory and mass storage devices such as magnetic tapes or hard disks. Records are a fundamental component of most data structures, especially linked data structures. Many files are organized as arrays of logical records, often grouped into larger physical records or blocks for efficiency.

    The parameters of a function or procedure can often be viewed as the fields of a record variable; and the arguments passed to that function can be viewed as a record value that gets assigned to that variable at the time of the call. Also, in the call stack that is often used to implement procedure calls, each entry is an

    activation record or call frame, containing the procedure parameters and local variables, the return address, and other internal fields.

    An object in object-oriented language is essentially a record that contains procedures specialized to handle that record; and object data types (often called object classes) are an elaboration of record types. Indeed, in most object-oriented languages, records are just special cases of objects.

    A record can be viewed as the computer analog of a mathematical tuple. In the same vein, a record type can be viewed as the computer language analog of the Cartesian product of two or more mathematical sets, or the implementation of an abstract product type in a specific language.

2013

• (Wikipedia, 2013) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_management#management Retrieved:2013-11-30.
  • … A record is defined as being something that represents proof of existence and that can be used to recreate or prove state of existence, regardless of medium or characteristics. A record is either created or received by an organization in pursuance of or compliance with legal obligations, or in the transaction of business. Records can be either tangible objects, such as paper documents like birth certificates, driver's licenses, and physical medical x-rays, or digital information, such as electronic office documents, data in application databases, web site content, and electronic mail (email).

2009

• ???
  • A concept about which data are to be stored in a database.
  • Representation of facts, concepts, or instructions in a formalized manner suitable for communication, interpretation or processing by humans or automatic means.
  • An instance of an entity type is data about one specific thing. E.g. a specific customer
  • Object: A fundamental element of a conceptual representation that reflects the "real world" at levels of abstraction and resolution appropriate for interoperability.
  • For any given value of time, the state of an object is defined as the enumeration of all its attribute values.
  • Anything that exists in storage and on which operations can be performed. Examples include files, programs, and arrays.
  • A Data Object is any persistent entity within a relational database that is exposed to the applications as an object. An example is a row within the "users" table.
  • Data Object: Basic definition of the Data Element. Set of ideas, abstractions, or things that can be identified with explicit business meaning
  • In a non-relational database system, a record is an entry in a file, consisting of individual elements of information, which together provide full details about an aspect of the information needed by the system. Individual elements are held in fields and all records are held in files.
  • In a relational system, record is an alternate word for row.
  • An instance of data in a table, a record is a collection of all the facts related to one physical or conceptual entity; often referring to a single object or person, usually represented as a row of data in a table, and sometimes referred to as a tuple in some, particularly older, database management systems.

2008

• (Wick et al., 2008) ⇒ Michael Wick, Khashayar Rohanimanesh, Karl Schultz, and Andrew McCallum. (2008). “A Unified Approach for Schema Matching, Coreference, and Canonicalization.” In: Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD-2008).
  • … consider the two different data records of a person named John Smith in Table 1. Each data record is represented using a different schema. … In our unified data integration approach we aim for a representation that enables us to perform inference and learning over two different types of objects: (1) data records (in relation to the coreference resolution and canonicalization tasks); (2) schema attributes (in relation to the schema matching task).

2005

• (Getoor & Diehl, 2005) ⇒ Lise Getoor, and Christopher P. Diehl. (2005). “Link Mining: A survey.” In: SIGKDD Explorations, 7(2).
  • QUOTE: "Links," or more generically relationships, among data instances are ubiquitous.

2000

• (Liu et al., 2000) ⇒ Bing Liu, Yiming Ma, and Ching Kian Wong. (2000). “Improving an Association Rule Based Classifier.” In: Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on Principles of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (PKDD 2000). doi:10.1007/3-540-45372-5
  • QUOTE: Let [math]\displaystyle{ I = \lbrace i_1, i_2, ..., i_m \rbrace }[/math] be a set of items. Let [math]\displaystyle{ D }[/math] be a set of transactions (the dataset), where each transaction [math]\displaystyle{ d }[/math] (a data record) is an set of items such that [math]\displaystyle{ d }[/math] in I.

1996

• (Wall et al., 1996) ⇒ Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Randal L. Schwartz. (1996). “Programming Perl, 2nd edition." O'Reilly. ISBN:1565921496
  • QUOTE:
    • record: A set of related data values in a file or stream, often associated with a unique key field. In UNIX, often commensurate with a line, or a blank-line-delimited set of lines (a "paragraph"). Each line of the /etc/passwd file is a record, keyed on login name, containing information about that user.
    • tuple: In the lingo of relational databases, a record or line containing fields. See relation.

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2024

• (Wikipedia, 2024) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_(computer_science) Retrieved:2024-4-9.
  • In computer science, a record (also called a structure, struct, or compound data) is a basic data structure. Records in a database or spreadsheet are usually called "rows". A record is a collection of fields, possibly of different data types, typically in a fixed number and sequence. The fields of a record may also be called members, particularly in object-oriented programming; fields may also be called elements, though this risks confusion with the elements of a collection. For example, a date could be stored as a record containing a numeric year field, a month field represented as a string, and a numeric day-of-month field. A personnel record might contain a name, a salary, and a rank. A Circle record might contain a center and a radius—in this instance, the center itself might be represented as a point record containing x and y coordinates. Records are distinguished from arrays by the fact that their number of fields is determined in the definition of the record, and by the fact the records are a heterogenous data type; not all of the fields must contain the same type of data.

    A record type is a data type that describes such values and variables. Most modern computer languages allow the programmer to define new record types. The definition includes specifying the data type of each field and an identifier (name or label) by which it can be accessed. In type theory, product types (with no field names) are generally preferred due to their simplicity, but proper record types are studied in languages such as System F-sub. Since type-theoretical records may contain first-class function-typed fields in addition to data, they can express many features of object-oriented programming.

    Records can exist in any storage medium, including main memory and mass storage devices such as magnetic tapes or hard disks. Records are a fundamental component of most data structures, especially linked data structures. Many computer files are organized as arrays of logical records, often grouped into larger physical records or blocks for efficiency.

    The parameters of a function or procedure can often be viewed as the fields of a record variable; and the arguments passed to that function can be viewed as a record value that gets assigned to that variable at the time of the call. Also, in the call stack that is often used to implement procedure calls, each entry is an activation record or call frame, containing the procedure parameters and local variables, the return address, and other internal fields.

    An object in object-oriented language is essentially a record that contains procedures specialized to handle that record; and object types are an elaboration of record types. Indeed, in most object-oriented languages, records are just special cases of objects, and are known as plain old data structures (PODSs), to contrast with objects that use OO features.

    A record can be viewed as the computer analog of a mathematical tuple, although a tuple may or may not be considered a record, and vice versa, depending on conventions and the specific programming language. In the same vein, a record type can be viewed as the computer language analog of the Cartesian product of two or more mathematical sets, or the implementation of an abstract product type in a specific language.