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What Is Machine-Readable Data?

Zoom Local News > Technology > What Is Machine-Readable Data?

What Is Machine-Readable Data?

Can you imagine reading a 401-page document in a few seconds? While this feat may be impossible for a human, a machine that has been created for reading documents can. Of course, these types of machines can do more than just read a document in a few seconds, but that’s one of the best features.

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But, in order for a machine to do that, the document needs to be machine-readable. So, what is machine readable information? That’s what we’ll help you understand today, so keep on reading to understand this interesting concept.

Machine-Readable Data vs. Human-Readable Data

As you can imagine, a machine-readable format is an information that a computer can read, and human-readable data is that of which anyone can read. So let’s break down these two types of data.

Machine Readable Format

Machine readable information is a complex structure of syntaxes and numbers that most people can’t understand. Here is an example of machine readable text:

“{“name”:” Herbet’s Gas Station”,” type”:” DieselType”,” crs” :{

“price”:” $2″:{ “name”:” HGND:4832″}}”

Now, if you take your time, you could understand what the machine readable text means, but imagine reading hundred of lines of codes like the previously shown. But, a computer can read thousands of pages like this in mere seconds if the data has been optimized as a machine readable document.

Human Readable Format

This type of data is quite simple to explain as it’s what humans have been doing for thousands of years: written documents or graphs. So let’s translate the previous data into a human-readable format.

“The name of the gas station is Herbet’s Gas Station. The type of fuel is diesel, and the price is $2. The name of the diesel brand is HGND, with the serial number of 4832.”

As you can see, reading this is quite simple and clear. But, again, imagine reading a 400-page document about the matter. Clearly, machine-readable information is far superior, as a computer will efficiently read all of the data in a short amount of time.

Types of Machine-Readable Data

The main types of machine readable code are CSV, RDF, and JSON. But other types are becoming popular like tesseract c#. Let’s take a moment to look at each one.

CSV (Comma-Separated Variables) Data Format

The most common machine-readable format is that of CSV. Microsoft Excel and other similar programs provide this type of format. It can read tabular text, which is the text that a programmer has formatted into different boxes.

RDF (Resource Description Framework ) Data Format

Programmers most commonly use RDF in web development as this type of code allows for linking data sets. Think of a web chart when picturing the RDF data format.

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) Data Format

Programmers apply JSON to serialize structured data, changing the given data into a format understandable by the user. This type of data can be read and understood by most programmers.

Machine-Readable Data Is the Future

Hopefully, by the end of this post, you understand what machine-readable data is. As you can see, machine-readable format is the future of data as it can help governments and other entities read documents efficiently and with ease.

What other machine-readable code do you know of? Let us know in the comment section. And if you want to read more articles related to technology, be sure to look at our other posts!

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