结构化数据、半结构化数据和非结构化数据

Structured data is organized into entities that have a defined format, such as XML documents or database tables that conform to a particular predefined schema. This is the realm of the RDBMS. 

Semi-structured data, on the other hand, is looser, and though there may be a schema, it is often ignored, so it may be used only as a guide to the structure of the data: for example, a spreadsheet, in which the structure is the grid of cells, although the cells themselves may hold any form of data.

Unstructured data does not have any particular internal structure: for example, plain text or image data. Hadoop works well on unstructured or semi-structured data because it is designed to interpret the data at processing time (so called schema-on-read). This provides flexibility and avoids the costly data loading phase of an RDBMS, since in Hadoop it is just a file copy.

《Hadoop权威指南》