nonstored

Nonstored is a term used in computing and information systems to describe data, state, or values that are not retained in persistent storage. Such data exists only temporarily during computation or in volatile media and is typically discarded when the process ends, restarts, or loses power. Nonstored data contrasts with stored data, which is written to persistent storage such as disks, databases, or long-term memory.

In practice, nonstored data may reside in memory, CPU registers, or ephemeral caches. It can be recomputed or reconstituted from stored sources, rather than being saved long-term. Examples include transient session state held in RAM, temporary buffers used during data processing, and streaming or real-time signals that are consumed and discarded as they pass through a system.

Design considerations for nonstored data focus on performance and reliability. Since such data can be lost, systems often favor idempotent operations, stateless designs, or mechanisms to reconstruct state from stored sources. Ephemeral data requires careful handling of fault tolerance, backpressure, and recovery, especially in distributed architectures or when scaling across nodes.

In summary, nonstored denotes elements that are not kept beyond the immediate lifecycle of a computation or session, serving as a contrast to persisted, durable data. It is a broadly used descriptor in documentation for software, databases, and systems design to highlight the transient nature of certain information.