Data access typically refers to software and activities related to storing, retrieving, or acting on data housed in a database or other repository. There are two types of data access, sequential access and random access.
Data Access is simply the authorization you have to access different data files. Data access can help distinguish the abilities of Administrators and users. E.g. Admin’s may be able to remove, edit and add data while a general user may not be able as they don’t have the access to that particular file.
Historically, different methods and languages were required for every repository, including each different database, file system, etc., and many of these repositories stored their content in different and incompatible formats.
In more recent days, standardized languages, methods, and formats, have been created to serve as interfaces between the often proprietary, and always idiosyncratic, specific languages and methods. Such standards include SQL, ODBC, JDBC, XQJ, ADO.NET, XML, X Query, X Path, and Web Services.
Some of these standards enable translation of data from unstructured (such as HTML or free-text files) to structured (such as XML or SOL).
Famous quotes containing the words data and/or access:
“Mental health data from the 1950’s on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depression and feelings of uselessness. This isn’t surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crow’s feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. After all, one reckons, “they” don’t want me, “they” accept their own mediocrity and refuse my best, “they” don’t deserve me.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)