Real World SharePoint® 2010: Indispensable Experiences from 22 MVPs

Chapter 16. Managing Metadata with SharePoint Server 2010

By Joris Poelmans

From a document-management perspective, SharePoint Server 2007 already provided a number of exceptional improvements — such as the introduction of both content types and site columns. From a metadata-management perspective, SharePoint Server 2010 again adds extra capabilities that effectively bridge the gap with other high-end document-management systems.

This chapter looks at how you can use the built-in metadata support from SharePoint Server 2010 to effectively organize all your content. SharePoint Server 2010 provides support for building a detailed taxonomy structure, as well as supporting folksonomies. Both of these approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, which are touched upon in this chapter.

Because the Enterprise Managed Metadata (EMM) service plays a central role within setting up both folksonomies and taxonomies, you learn how you need to configure EMM in an efficient way. You also learn how EMM mitigates issues with large-scale, content-type deployment. Finally, this chapter explores how you can extend the out-of-the box functionality with regard to metadata management.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

The term "information architecture" was probably first used in the 1970s by Richard Saul Wurman when he described the role of an information architect as an emergent twenty-first century professional occupation focused on the science of information. But, it was not until 1996 that the term became ...