Data Formats

Question 1

What is ASCII

Answer 1

The oldest file format.
Turns standard letters of the alphabet into binary code with 1s and 0s.
Includes control characters like new lines.

Question 2

Benefits of ASCII

Answer 2

Every computer uses it, allows for all computers to read text from other computers (such as emails).
In the early days of computers, there were different formats for text leading to incompatibility.

Question 3

Limitation of ASCII

Answer 3

• Non English characters are not supported including accents.
  Because of this extensions of ASCII have been created mainly
  UTF-8 for all international characters.

Question 4

What is AIFF

Answer 4

An uncompressed, large file format developed by Apple.
Stores metadata.
Mostly used for sound data for electronic audio devices on PCs.

Question 5

Benefit and limitation of AIFF

Answer 5

High quality.
It is uncompressed
It takes up a lot of storage.

Question 6

What is XML

Answer 6

A text file format for documents.
Uses tags to define aspects of data like its formatting.
XML can be used to transfer data between different applications and is often used on the web.

Question 7

2 benefits of XML

Answer 7

The text format is easy to read and understand for machines and humans.
Compatible with different types of software.

Question 8

1 Limitation of XML

Answer 8

The text file format can take up a lot of storage space if a lot of data is stored.

Question 9

What is JPEG

Answer 9

A photographic image format commonly used for digital cameras.
Uses compression to make the image size smaller for use on websites.

Question 10

What is PNG?

Answer 10

A compressed format commonly used for diagrams, logos and charts.
Unlike JPEG PNGs can have transparent backgrounds making them a better choice for web graphics.

Question 11

What is TIFF

Answer 11

A uncompressed file format
with no data loss from when they were created
so have a larger file size.
Became less popular for web graphics and replaced by JPEG for its smaller size.

Question 12

What is JSON

Answer 12

A text based format that allows the exchange of data between web pages and servers.
Used in web applications for tasks like storing data entered by a user.

Question 13

Benefits of JSON

Answer 13

Can be accessed by any programming language and is extremely simple.

Question 14

Limits of JSON

Answer 14

Doesn’t support dates,
comments from programmers
or multimedia types like images.

Question 15

What is the Numeric format

Answer 15

Quanative data 
that consists of numbers
that can be measured and counted.

Question 16

Benefit and limitation of Numeric format

Answer 16

B _ Easy for computers to
read
process
and store it.
L - Is difficult for humans to understand
and if in a binary format it is even more confusing.