What Is Metadata and Why Is Metadata Important?

The arrival of the era of big data means the mass and complexity of data, and also means higher requirements for data processing. For a business, a small piece of metadata can cause huge losses or create infinite convenience. In this article, we’ll define what is metadata, examine why it’s important, and discuss how it can help companies organize, classify, and retrieve documents faster.

What is metadata?

Metadata is data about data, and is data that exists to describe relevant information about data.

Metadata can be divided into three categories according to the different objects they describe, namely “technical metadata”, “business metadata”, and “management metadata”.

Technical metadata mainly describes related conceptual information in the technical field of the system, including data structure, data processing feature description, and data source interface, data warehouse, data mart, storage and other comprehensive data processing information. This type of metadata is mainly used by technicians who build systems.

Business metadata is mainly used to describe business related concepts and other information recorded in the system, including business terms, information classification, indicator definitions, business rules, etc. It provides a semantic layer between the user and the actual system, so that business personnel who do not understand computer technology can also “read” the data in the data warehouse. The main users of this kind of metadata are business people and corporate decision makers.

Management metadata is used to define related concepts and other information related to the management field in the system, including personnel roles, job responsibilities, etc., such as descriptions of project management, IT operation and maintenance, IT resource equipment and other related information. This metadata is mainly used by managers in the corporate IT department. This metadata enables management of work assignments, network resources, and more.

Why is metadata important?

In the context of the era of big data, data is an asset, and metadata realizes the description and formatting of information. This creates the possibility for machine processing, which can help companies better manage data assets and clarify the relationship between data. In the traditional sense, metadata is useful in two ways:

First, it can help data platforms understand their own situation. For example: what data is there? How big is the data stored? How to find the required data? When will the data be produced, etc.? When we get this information, we can do the corresponding operation and maintenance alarm and other work.

Second, it can help data platforms formulate standards for data statistics. For example: how to unify the data caliber? How are the calculation indicators unified? How is the relationship between the data? What information is the upstream and downstream associated data of the data, etc.? By opening up the relationship between upstream and downstream data, it can lay the foundation for data quality and maintenance visualization.

What are the applications of metadata?

1. Data lineage analysis: Data lineage is an important application of metadata, which can describe the relationship between data and data.
2. Data map: In the entire data system, the data map assumes the role of a manager, displaying data information in a graphical way, and indicating various information parameters necessary for data calculation. Not only can data developers use it, but it is also very friendly to product and operation personnel.

How to manage metadata?

1. Determine metadata scope：First, we need to determine the scope of metadata sources. In practice, not all data requires metadata management. Usually we choose business data for metadata management, and non-business data will not be included in the management scope, mainly because metadata management is to provide business and developers with a quick grasp of business data.
2. Access metadata：Metadata is generally accessed from the source system. If the company already has a data warehouse or the real-time requirements are not high, in order to save the development workload, the existing metadata will be accessed from the data warehouse, and those that have not been accessed will be accessed from the source system. However, this solution is also risky. If the data of the data warehouse is inconsistent with the source system, it will lead to metadata errors. Most of the metadata extraction is now done in the way of configuration automation.
3. Establish metadata standards：In the process of sorting, there may be some databases or some data definitions that are not standardized, resulting in the inability of metadata management. Next, it is necessary to establish a metadata management specification to reverse the front-end source data for rectification, mainly to ensure the integrity and consistency of the metadata. According to the requirements of different types of companies, metadata will be open to different groups of people, so it is necessary to manage the rights of metadata. In the specification, it is necessary to define the permission management process: metadata permission hierarchy, metadata permission application process, metadata release process, and metadata review process.
4. Maintenance of metadata：Metadata maintenance is mainly to maintain and manage the metadata that has been released. If the metadata that has been released online needs to be adjusted or optimized, it must go through the metadata release process again, and direct modification of the metadata is not allowed. For security, all metadata operations must be recorded in the metadata operation log.
5. Metadata search, analysis, reporting：There is a separate page to support fuzzy or precise fast search of metadata, and find corresponding metadata by entering key information. Metadata can also be regarded as a type of data assets, so we need to produce a metadata asset report, from which we can quickly understand the metadata access popularity, data value, data cost, data distribution and other related information.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading our article and we hope it can help you to have a better understanding of what is metadata and why it’s important. If you want to learn more about metadata, we would like to advise you to visit Gudu SQLFlow for more information.

As one of the best data lineage tools available on the market today, Gudu SQLFlow can not only analyze SQL script files, obtain data lineage, and perform visual display, but also allow users to provide data lineage in CSV format and perform visual display.