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:
“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it—all my life.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.”
—Harper Lee (b. 1926)