Abstract:

Generally, big data is regarded as a term about data sets so large or complex that conventional data technologies cannot handle. This statement of big data leads to confusion: none of big data has been handled by existing data technologies;or none of current successful data applications can be called as big data. Therefore, what is the best way to define big data becomes a problem. Data, technology, and application were regarded as three associated key factors of big data by analyzing the state-of-the-art of big data. A comprehensive definition on big data was defined as the umbrella of big data set, big data technology, and big data application. Here, big data set means all data that can be acquired and were related to one decision-making application instead of all data in an area or an enterprise. In addition, the issues in big data applications and the main challenges in big data technologies were discussed. Finally, the future directions of big data research were presented including data science and the technologies of big data reservation and development.

Key words: big data, data science, data nature