9.1. CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
Find out why metadata is so important
Understand who needs metadata and what types they need
Review metadata types by the three functional areas
Discuss business metadata and technical metadata in detail
Examine all the requirements metadata must satisfy
Understand the challenges for metadata management
Study options for providing metadata
We discussed metadata briefly in earlier chapters. In Chapter 2, we considered metadata as one of the major building blocks for a data warehouse. We grouped metadata into the three types, namely, operational, extraction and transformation, and end-user metadata. While discussing the major data warehousing trends in Chapter 3, we reviewed the industry initiatives to standardize metadata.
This chapter deals with the topic of metadata in sufficient depth. We will attempt to remove the fuzzy feeling about the exact meaning, content, and characteristics of metadata. We will also get an appreciation for why metadata is vitally important. Further, we will look for practical methods to provide effective metadata in a data warehouse environment.
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