What is Metadata Management?

“By 2021, organizations will spend twice as much effort in managing metadata compared with 2018 to assess the value and risks associated with the data and its use.”

*Gartner, The State of Metadata Management

The Definition of Metadata Management

As mentioned in our previous article “The difference between data and metadata”, metadata provides context to your data. And to trust your data’s context, you must understand it. Knowing the who, what, when, where, and why of your data means knowing your metadata, otherwise known as metadata management.

With the arrival of Big Data and the various regulations, data leaders must look further into their data through metadata. Metadata is created whenever data is created, added, deleted from, updated, or acquired. For example, metadata in an Excel spreadsheet includes the date of creation, the name, the associated authors, the file size, etc. In addition, metadata could also include titles and comments made in the document.

In the past, a form of metadata management would be to look up a book’s call number in a catalog to find its location in a library. Today, metadata management is used in software solutions to comply with data regulations, set up data governance as well as understand the data’s value. Thus, this discipline becomes essential for enterprises.

Why Should You Implement a Metadata Management Strategy

The first use case regarding metadata management is to facilitate the discovery and understanding of a person’s or program’s specific data asset.

This requires setting up a metadata repository, populating and generating easy to use information in it.

Here are, Among Others, Benefits of Metadata Management:

• A better understanding of the meaning of enterprise’s data assets.
• More communication on a data’s semantics via a data catalog.
• Data leaders are more efficient, leading to faster project delivery.
• The use of data dictionaries and business glossaries allow the identification of synergies and the verification of coherent information.
• Reinforcement of data documentation (deletions, archives, quality, etc.).
• Generate audit and information tracks (risk and security for compliance).

Manage Your Metadata With a Metadata Management Platform

With the Actian Data Intelligence Platform, transform your metadata into exploitable knowledge! Our metadata management platform automatically curates and updates your information from your storage systems. It becomes a unique, up-to-date source of knowledge for any data explorer in the enterprise.

About Actian Corporation

Actian makes data easy. Our data platform simplifies how people connect, manage, and analyze data across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. With decades of experience in data management and analytics, Actian delivers high-performance solutions that empower businesses to make data-driven decisions. Actian is recognized by leading analysts and has received industry awards for performance and innovation. Our teams share proven use cases at conferences (e.g., Strata Data) and contribute to open-source projects. On the Actian blog, we cover topics ranging from real-time data ingestion to AI-driven analytics. Get to know the leadership team https://www.actian.com/company/leadership-team/