Semi-structured data is a form of structured data that is not rigidly structured. The data model associated with semi-structured data is interpreted when the data is read from a data storage medium or accessed in memory. The data model need not conform to a predefined database schema and is not optimized for succinct, low-overhead streaming or persistent storage as is normal with a relational database, graph database, data table, or graph. Instead, semi-structured data includes delimiter characters or tags to separate semantic elements or to describe relationships among records and fields within the data. The data is said to have a self-describing structure.