Data Lake
In plain terms
A repository storing raw data of any type at scale.
Going deeper
A data lake holds structured and unstructured raw data cheaply until needed, applying structure on read. It's flexible but can become disorganized.
Under the hood
Schema-on-read enables flexibility; without governance it risks becoming a 'data swamp'.
Examples
Raw logs, ML training data, S3/ADLS, big data, lakehouse architectures.
Think of it like...
Like a vast reservoir holding all kinds of water until you filter what you need.