Wednesday, 25 November 2015

Non-technical word or phrase to describe a data "query"

I would consider query to be suitable for a non-technical audience, provided you don't get into the details of the query implementation.



However, if you're looking for something less technical, I would simply use operation:




Attached are the results of the usual operation [on the dataset].




You could also add "with the same/usual parameters". It's not clear from your question what may have varied: you could potentially have a different dataset, a different query (although obviously here you want it to be the same) or a different set of parameters for that query (for example, a different date), so it might be useful to make it clear what changed and what didn't.



You might also be able to use process, but this has the downside of being a technical term too (which would generally not be suitable in this case). When replacing technical terms for a non-technical audience, I prefer avoiding terms that may collide with technical terms taken out of context, which would confuse a technical audience in this case.




Another way to use "process" more neutrally is not to use it as a noun. For example, like this:




We've processed the data in the same way as [usual/we've done in the past], using the new dates. Here are the results.


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