Data lake
A centralised repository that stores raw, unstructured data at any scale. Automation pipelines feed data lakes from multiple sources CRM, billing, support, analytics creating a single source of truth for BI and AI workloads.
Expert insight
A data lake without a defined schema-on-read strategy and clear ownership tends to accumulate into a dumping ground that's technically queryable but practically unusable, the flexibility that makes a data lake appealing (store anything, structure later) is also what lets it become disorganized without deliberate governance.
In a real workflow
Raw events from the website, CRM and billing are stored in a data lake for later analysis.
Common mistakes
- A lake nobody can query.
- Personal data stored without retention rules.
Complexity level
Technical term used in production automation systems.
Related terms
Data pipeline
A sequence of data processing steps that move and transform data from source to …
ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)
A three-phase data pipeline pattern: extract raw data from source systems, trans…
SQL (Structured Query Language)
The language used to query and manipulate relational databases. In automation, S…
See it in action
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