Objectives:

Metadata include information about technical and business processes, rules and constraints on the data and on logical and physical data structures. They describe the data itself, the concepts that the data represents and the connections betweeen the data and the concepts. Metadata elp an organisation understand its data, systems and workflows. It enables the evaluation of data quality and is integral to the management of databases and other applications. They contribute to the ability to process, maintain, integrate, protect, control and govern other data.

To understand the vital role of metadata in data management, imagine a large library with hundreds of thousands of books and magazines, but with no catalogue. Without a catalogue, readers might not even know where to start looking for a specific book or even a specific subject. The catalogue not only provides the necessary information (such as which books and materials are owned by the library and where they are store), but also allows users to find contents usinf different starting points (subject area, author or title). Without the catalogue, finding a specific book would be difficult if not impossible. An organisation without metadata is like a library without a catalogue.

Activities carried out by our Team:

Creating a metadata strategy

A metadata strategy describes how an organisation intends to manage its metadata and how it will move from its current state to future practices. A metadata strategy sould provide a framework for development teams to improve metadata management. The development of requirements for metadata will clarify the leading factors of the strategy and identify potential barriers to its implementation. The strategy includes the definition of the organisation’s future metadata architecture and the implementation steps needed to achieve the strategic objectives. The steps include:

• Start planning the metadata strategy
• Interviewing the main stakeholders
• Assessing existing metadata sources and the information architecture
• Developing future metadata architecture
• Developing a gradual implementation plan

Understanding metadata requirements

Metadata requirements start with the content. Which metadata is required and at what level. There are also many requirements focused on the functionalities associated with complete metadata solution:

• Volatility: How often attributes and metadata sets will be updated
• Synchronisation: Timing of updates in relation to source changes
• History: Whether or not historical versions of metadata are to be preserved
• Right of access: Who can access metadata and how they can do it, along with specific user interface functionalities for access
• Structure: How metadata will be modeled for the storage
• Integration: The degree of metada integration coming from different sources; rules of integration
• Maintenance: Processes and rules for the updating of metadata (registration and deferment of approval)
• Management: Roles and responsibilities in metadata management
• Quality: Quality requirements of metadata

Defining the metadata architecture

A metadata management system must be able to extract metadata from many sources and design the architecture to be able to scan the various metadata sources and update the repository periodically. The system must support manual metadata updates, requests, searches and metadata explorations by various user groups. A managed metadata environment should isolate the end user from the various sources of metadata. The architecture should provide a single access point for the metadata repository. The access point should provide all relevant metadata resources in a transparent manner to the user.

Creating and maintaining metadata

Metadata is created through a series of processes and stored in many places within an organisation. To be of high quality, metadata must be managed as a product. Good metadata is not created accidentally and requires planning. Several general principles of metadata management describe the means to manage metadata in terms of quality:

• Reporting: Acknowledge that metadata is often created trough existing processes and hold process owners accountable for metadata quality.
• Standard: Set, implement and verify standards to simplify integration and enable its use.
• Improvement: Create a feedback mechanism so that users can inform the metadata management team of incorrect or outdated metadata. Like other data, metadata can be profiled and inspected for quality.

Interrogation, report and analyses of metadata

Metadata guides the use of data assets. Using metadata in business intelligence, business decisions and business semantics. A metadata repository must have a front-end application that supports the search and retrieval functionality required for this leading and data asset management.