Rohdatenbank

Rohdatenbank is a term that can be understood in the context of data management and databases. It literally translates from German to "raw database" or "raw data database." This designation typically refers to a database that stores data in its original, unprocessed, or minimally processed form.

The primary purpose of a rohdatenbank is to serve as a foundational repository for data before it undergoes any significant transformations, cleaning, enrichment, or aggregation. This approach is common in data warehousing, data lakes, and big data architectures where preserving the original state of the data is crucial for auditing, re-processing, or applying different analytical models later on.

Storing raw data allows for flexibility. If initial processing steps prove to be suboptimal or if new analytical requirements emerge, analysts can always go back to the rohdatenbank to re-process the data using updated methods or criteria without losing the original information. This avoids the potential for irreversible data loss or corruption that might occur if data is heavily processed and then stored.

In practice, a rohdatenbank might be implemented using various technologies, from traditional relational databases to distributed file systems like HDFS, or object storage solutions. The key characteristic is the emphasis on immutability and the preservation of the data's initial state. It acts as a single source of truth for the most granular and untouched data available.