Data Is the New Oil–Sort of: A View on Why This Comparison Is Misleading and Its Implications for Modern Data Administration

Abstract

Currently, data are often referred to as the oil of the 21st century. This comparison is not only used to express that the resource data are just as important for the fourth industrial revolution as oil was for the technological revolution in the late 19th century. There are also further similarities between these two valuable resources in terms of their handling. Both must first be discovered and extracted from their sources. Then, the raw materials must be cleaned, preprocessed, and stored before they can finally be delivered to consumers. Despite these undeniable similarities, however, there are significant differences between oil and data in all of these processing steps, making data a resource that is considerably more challenging to handle. For instance, data sources, as well as the data themselves, are heterogeneous, which means there is no one-size-fits-all data acquisition solution. Furthermore, data can be distorted by the source or by third parties without being noticed, which affects both quality and usability. Unlike oil, there is also no uniform refinement process for data, as data preparation should be tailored to the subsequent consumers and their intended use cases. With regard to storage, it has to be taken into account that data are not consumed when they are processed or delivered to consumers, which means that the data volume that has to be managed is constantly growing. Finally, data may be subject to special constraints in terms of distribution, which may entail individual delivery plans depending on the customer and their intended purposes. Overall, it can be concluded that innovative approaches are needed for handling the resource data that address these inherent challenges. In this paper, we therefore study and discuss the relevant characteristics of data making them such a challenging resource to handle. In order to enable appropriate data provisioning, we introduce a holistic research concept from data source to data sink that respects the processing requirements of data producers as well as the quality requirements of data consumers and, moreover, ensures a trustworthy data administration.