Most market research data contains responses collected using categorical questions that have a predefined list of responses or categories. An example is the question What do you remember seeing in the museum today? Respondents answer by selecting items from a list of responses. This type of data is hard to represent and analyze using conventional tools. However, the UNICOM Intelligence Data Model supports the categorical variable type, and using the UNICOM Intelligence Data Model you can run structured query language (SQL) queries on categorical data. SQL (not to be confused with SQL Server) is a standard international language for defining and accessing data. The UNICOM Intelligence Data Model supports a subset of the SQL language natively and has built in an expression evaluation component, a library of functions, a number of SQL syntax extensions, and a scriptable programming language that have all been designed specifically to meet the needs of the market research industry.

This section provides an introduction to market research data types, how they are handled by the UNICOM Intelligence Data Model, and the terminology used in this documentation.