What is Metadata?
What is Metadata?
Metadata provides information about data.
Why is Metadata Important?
So, what is metadata and why is it important? Metadata provides information that helps consumers find, use, and understand the data’s quality and where it came from. Metadata also demonstrates how data is related to provide context for users.
Types of Metadata
It can be classified into the following categories:
- Descriptive Metadata includes information such as the author, creation date, modification date, and size.
- Structural Metadata describes how compound data is structured. For example, a single string might contain multiple fields, including variable field length information and datatype.
- Administrative Metadata provides management information, such as how often it needs to be refreshed to remain useful.
- Reference Metadata records information about the quality of the data and source.
- Legal Metadata records the copyright holder, usage limitations, and licensing requirements.
How it’s Used
Now that you what is metadata, you can see how it is used. Metadata fulfills multiple functions. Cataloging the data is important as it informs users of its quality, completeness, provenance, and authoritativeness. Images can have associated metadata, including digital signatures, creation dates, geographic locations, size and color depth. Exchangeable Image File (EXIF) data is a standards-based metadata embedded within the image file.
The data lakehouse provides metadata that significantly enhances the value of the data sets it maintains by documenting the data quality and relationships between different data assets.
Database management systems maintain it in system catalogs that record the number of records in a table, the cardinality of the data fields, high-water marks and low-water marks, the selectivity of indexes, and the clustering of data to indexes.
Modern web-based applications use application programming interfaces (APIs) to access third-party tools and pass data using metadata-rich datatypes such as JSON and XML. Traditional applications passed data between them, but it was not self-describing, and you could not interrogate them to learn what data they were expecting as you can with a modern web service. As applications become more componentized to be more easily used to build new apps, their numbers will grow, increasing their need to self-document their function and data needs.
Benefits of Metadata
The need for metadata is growing primarily due to the following benefits:
- It increases the usefulness of existing data sources.
- It makes data useful by documenting its quality and utility.
- It includes labels that enable data to be found using search engines.
- It promotes data governance by documenting data owners or their absence.
- As data volumes and sources grow, it becomes increasingly valuable.
- The use of data is a best practice of data management that benefits the data owner and business partners that share data. Data sharing success is dependent on good metadata. Data that is not well documented is likely to be unused or trusted.
- It is a foundational pillar of advanced data models such as data warehouses, data lakes, and data mesh.
- It supports the records discovery process for compliance audits.
- The visibility gained by using it to document an organization’s data assets is the first step in streamlining data use so duplicate data can be reviewed, merged or removed.
Actian and the Data Intelligence Platform
Actian Data Intelligence Platform is purpose-built to help organizations unify, manage, and understand their data across hybrid environments. It brings together metadata management, governance, lineage, quality monitoring, and automation in a single platform. This enables teams to see where data comes from, how it’s used, and whether it meets internal and external requirements.
Through its centralized interface, Actian supports real-time insight into data structures and flows, making it easier to apply policies, resolve issues, and collaborate across departments. The platform also helps connect data to business context, enabling teams to use data more effectively and responsibly. Actian’s platform is designed to scale with evolving data ecosystems, supporting consistent, intelligent, and secure data use across the enterprise. Request your personalized demo.
FAQ
Metadata is data that provides information about other data. It describes key attributes such as content, format, source, creation date, and usage, making it easier to organize, find, and manage data across systems.
Metadata is important because it helps users understand, locate, and use data efficiently. It improves data discovery, enhances data governance, and ensures that information remains accurate, searchable, and consistent across platforms.
The main types of metadata include descriptive metadata (for identifying content), structural metadata (for data organization), administrative metadata (for access and rights management), and technical metadata (for system-related details).
In data management, metadata enables better cataloging, tracking, and integration of data assets. It supports data lineage, compliance, and analytics by providing context about data sources, transformations, and usage history.
Metadata helps businesses improve data quality, ensure regulatory compliance, enable faster decision-making, and streamline workflows. It also enhances collaboration by allowing teams to easily understand and trust shared data assets.
Organizations can manage metadata effectively by using metadata management tools and data catalogs, implementing clear governance policies, and automating metadata collection. Regular audits and updates help maintain accuracy and consistency over time.
