What Is Data Availability?
If data were people, and those people were at a buffet, then data availability would be like the chocolate cake. You know what it will taste like before you take a bite, but then, who cares? Just keep eating until all the chocolate goodness is gone. Data availability ensures that data is available when and where it's needed. It can be challenging to ensure that your information is available, whether sitting on a server or a user's laptop or smartphone. To ensure this happens, you need to know who has the data they need, where they are and what they need to do with it next. A sophisticated data availability system enables organizations to plan effectively for real-time demand increases and appropriately scale resources. It is often confused with data durability, which is the capability of preserving data and not lost. Durability may be at the application level, but data availability is at the infrastructure level and focuses on ensuring that data is accessible by users. The best way to understand the difference between durability and availability is to think of data as a highway. Durability is like lane closure due to construction. You can drive your car on it, but it takes longer, it's less convenient, and you may have to take a different route. Availability is like a road closure due to a natural disaster. You can't drive your car on it, but it will be there when you need it next. It is a property of data that an authorized entity can access. It is a subset of the broader term "data integrity". In simple terms, if data is available, it can be retrieved with little or no interruption and loss of information; it is perceived as having been preserved through time without loss or corruption. If data is unavailable, the consequences can range from inconvenience and frustration to complete disaster, depending on the importance of the information in question. Therefore, the goal you face as software developers is to ensure that your application delivers data available 24 hours a day throughout its useful life.
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