Principles of Data Management - Facilitating information sharing Second edition

6 METADATA

This chapter introduces the concept of metadata and describes its role in data management and elsewhere.

WHAT IS METADATA?

Put very simply, metadata is ‘data about data’ or ‘data that describes other data’. This is a very broad definition of metadata and, in consequence, the term ‘metadata’ is used in a number of different contexts, principally as:

• metadata for data management;
• metadata for content management;
• metadata for describing data values.

METADATA FOR DATA MANAGEMENT

The classical data management view is that metadata in some way describes the types of data stored in a database. Table and column definitions for a database schema managed by an SQL database management system are metadata. Constraint definitions are also metadata. ...