Glossary

Data & reporting glossary

Plain-English definitions of the terms behind the data-to-report path — what they mean, why they matter, and a free tool for each.

A dashboard is a single screen that shows the key metrics and charts for a topic, so you can read the state of things at a glance.

Data extraction is the process of pulling structured data — rows, fields, tables — out of documents, files or systems so it can be used elsewhere.

A data pipeline is an automated sequence that moves data from a source through cleaning and transformation to a destination, usually on a schedule.

ETL stands for Extract, Transform, Load — the three steps of moving data from a source, cleaning and reshaping it, and writing it to a destination.

OCR (optical character recognition) converts images of text — like a scanned page or photo — into machine-readable characters.

A pivot table summarises a larger table by grouping rows and aggregating values — counts, sums, averages — so patterns become visible.