Machine-generated data is information automatically generated by a computer process, application, or other mechanism without the active intervention of a human.
"[2] Meanwhile, Daniel Abadi, CS Professor at Yale, proposes a narrower definition, "Machine-generated data is data that is generated as a result of a decision of an independent computational agent or a measurement of an event that is not caused by a human action.
[5] Machine-generated data has no single form; rather, the type, format, metadata, and frequency respond to some particular business purpose.
Machines often create it on a defined time schedule or in response to a state change, action, transaction, or other event.
Alternative approaches exist with columnar databases as only particular "columns" of the dataset would be accessed during particular analysis.