Many people wonder, what is a data extract or what is data extract? Data extract is the data that has been chosen and extracted from a bigger database or source for some particular purpose. Rather than accessing the whole database, companies extract only those data which are required for reporting, analysis, migration, or decision making. For instance, a retail store might prepare a data extract which will contain only data regarding the purchase history of its customers for using in marketing campaigns. It helps in saving time while processing the data. The extracted data is then cleaned and structured, which can later on be loaded in an analytics tool or in a CRM system. For this purpose, there is always data extraction software available or one can make use of a data extraction service.