volume, variety and velocity (Big Data) (3Vs)

Volume, Variety and Velocity (3Vs) are the characteristic features of data processing with enormous data volumes, as they occur in Big Data.

Here, the term volume refers to the amount of data and is expressed in gigabytes( GB), terabytes ( TB), petabytes( PB), or even exa- or zettabytes(ZB). It is about records, transactions and tables.

Variety refers to the number of different types and forms of data available online and offline. This includes all database formats, the diverse variants of XML formats, websites and all unstructured and structured text, image, video and audio file formats. And the third characteristic feature, velocity, refers to the processing speed. It thus meets the demand for the increasing data rates that occur in business applications. The velocity factor takes into account real-time, data streams and the type of data processing.

The entire data management in Big Data applications is based on the three characteristics mentioned, volume, variety and velocity, and not just on one of the characteristics mentioned.