Overview

This reference article explains what a web data feed(or web feed) is, and its purpose is to improve the understanding of the concept while working or troubleshooting servers.

Information

The data feed is a mechanism for users to receive updated data from data sources. It is commonly used by real-time applications in point-to-point settings, as well as on the World Wide Web. The latter is also called web feed. A newsfeed is a popular form of web feed. Rich Site Summary (RSS) feed makes dissemination of blogs easy. Product feeds play an increasingly important role in e-commerce and internet marketing. Data feeds usually requires structured data. 

The data feed is often in the form of a file that contains information structured according to the specifications of the application receiving the data. The information is arranged in tables, with columns and rows, or with tags. The file types can vary, but formats like Extensive Markup Language (XML) and Comma-Separated Values (CSV) are standard because of their structure, and some of them support even plain text files because of their simplicity, which allows even non-technical individuals to create their data feeds easily.