The import and export of data is the automated or semi-automated
input and output
In computing, input/output (I/O, i/o, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, such as another computer system, peripherals, or a human operator. Inputs ar ...
of
data set
A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data. In the case of tabular data, a data set corresponds to one or more table (database), database tables, where every column (database), column of a table represents a particular Variable (computer sci ...
s between different
software application
Application software is any computer program that is intended for end-user use not computer operator, operating, system administration, administering or computer programming, programming the computer. An application (app, application program, sof ...
s. It involves "translating" from the format used in one application into that used by another, where such translation is accomplished automatically via machine processes, such as
transcoding
Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target ...
,
data transformation
In computing, data transformation is the process of converting data from one format or structure into another format or structure. It is a fundamental aspect of most data integrationCIO.com. Agile Comes to Data Integration. Retrieved from: https ...
, and others. True exports of data often contain data in raw formats otherwise unreadable to end-users without the user interface that was designed to render it.
Import and export of data shares semantic analogy with
copying and pasting, in that sets of data are copied from one application and pasted into another. In fact, the
software development
Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...
behind operating system
clipboards (and clipboard extender apps) greatly concerns the many details and challenges of data transformation and transcoding, in order to present the end user with the illusion of effortless copy and paste between any two apps, no matter how internally different. The "Save As" command in many applications requires much of the same engineering, when files are saved as another file format.
The ability to import and export data (or lack of such ability) has large economic implications, because it can be resource-intensive to input data in non-automated ways (such as manual rekeying), and because lack of
interoperability
Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader de ...
and
data portability
Data portability is a concept to protect users from having their data stored in "silos" or "walled gardens" that are incompatible with one another, i.e. closed platforms, thus subjecting them to vendor lock-in and making the creation of data back ...
between systems unable to import or export data between each other causes
stovepiping
In intelligence gathering, stovepiping is the presentation of information without proper context. It can be caused by the specialized nature or security requirements of a particular intelligence-collection technology. Alternatively, the lack of c ...
, lack of opportunity and efficiencies such as those seen in, for example,
mash-ups, and may not suffice in its ability to search for information as enabled by tools such as
grep
grep is a command-line utility for searching plaintext datasets for lines that match a regular expression. Its name comes from the ed command g/re/p (global regular expression search and print), which has the same effect. grep was originally de ...
.
See also
*
Data dump as export from databases
*
Data portability
Data portability is a concept to protect users from having their data stored in "silos" or "walled gardens" that are incompatible with one another, i.e. closed platforms, thus subjecting them to vendor lock-in and making the creation of data back ...
*
Solid (web decentralization project)
Solid (abbreviation from ''Social Linked Data'') is a Decentralized web, web decentralization project led by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, originally developed collaboratively at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...
: allows users to control and export their own data
References
External links
*
Importers Data
Input/output
{{computer science stub
Importers Data