TABLEDATA

TABLEDATA is a term used to refer to data organized in a tabular form, that is, in rows and columns, typically with a header describing each column. In computing and data processing, tabular data is one of the most common representations for structured information such as spreadsheets, database tables, and export files.

Although TABLEDATA is not a single formal standard, the phrase appears in various domains as a generic label for the actual records contained in a table. For example, in CSV and TSV files, each line represents one data row and each field corresponds to a column. In HTML, the content of a table is composed of row elements containing data cells, which together constitute the table data. In XML and JSON-based formats, table data is often represented as arrays of objects or as row elements with column children; some schema definitions may explicitly name the data portion of a table as TABLEDATA.

Key characteristics of table data include a fixed column order, a consistent row structure, and often a schema describing data types for each column. However, practical challenges include dealing with missing values, varying data types across sources, escaping or quoting in textual formats, and maintaining metadata about column meaning and units.

TABLEDATA is widely used in data analysis, reporting, and interchange between systems. Common related formats and tools include CSV and TSV, HTML tables, JSON Tables, and database tables, as well as columnar formats like Parquet and Apache Arrow, which optimize for analytical workloads.

See also: tabular data, CSV, TSV, HTML table, JSON Table Schema, Parquet, Apache Arrow, relational database.