Fundamentals of Metadata Management

Fundamentals of Metadata Management

by Ole Olesen-Bagneux
Released October 2025
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781098162825

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

Whether it's to adhere to regulations, access markets by meeting specific standards, or devise data analytics and AI strategies, companies today are busy implementing metadata repositories—metadata tools about the data, information, and knowledge in your company. Until now, most of these repositories have been implemented in isolation from one another, but this practice is at the core of problems with metadata management at large in many companies today.

Author Ole Olesen-Bagneux, chief evangelist at Zeenea, shows you how to masterfully manage your metadata repositories by properly coordinating them. That will help you and your organization democratize data and excel at metadata management. Coordination must be facilitated by an entirely new kind of team—the data discovery team—that will increase insights for all key players in enterprise metadata management, from the CIO and CDO to the enterprise and data architects of the company.

This book shows you how.

  • Understand what metadata repositories are and what they do
  • Learn what data, information, and knowledge should be represented in metadata repositories
  • Learn how these repositories should be managed and coordinated
  • Make data searchable by setting up a data discovery team
  • Increase innovation by setting up a functional data marketplace
  • Make information security and data protection more robust
  • Solidify compliance on data lineage and retention
  • Activate real enterprise architecture based on evidence
  • Get a firmer, deeper understanding of your company IT landscape

Publisher resources

View/Submit Errata

Table of contents

  1. Brief Table of Contents (Not Yet Final)
  2. 1. Toward Holistic Metadata Management
    1. Metadata Management Reinterpreted
    2. Data, Information, and Knowledge Management
    3. The Data Discovery Team
    4. The Meta Grid—the third wave of data decentralization
      1. Learning from hexagonal architectures toward a Meta Grid
    5. Summary
  3. 2. Metadata Repositories for the IT Landscape
    1. What Is Metadata?
      1. Types of metadata in IT landscapes
    2. What Is a Metadata Repository?
      1. Driver: The Many Waves of Metadata Repositories
      2. Purpose: Core Capabilities
      3. Place: Metadata repositories at various levels
      4. Structure: The metamodel in metadata repositories
    3. Summary
  4. 3. Data
    1. Endpoint Management System
    2. Integration Repository
    3. Data Catalog
    4. Asset Management System
    5. Database Model Management
    6. Configuration Management Database
    7. IT Service Management
    8. Enterprise Architecture Tool (EAM)
    9. The Ideal Setup of Data Metadata Repositories
      1. Overlapping Peripheral Capabilities for Data Metadata Repositories
    10. Summary
  5. 4. Information
    1. Why metadata repositories for information?
    2. Records and Information Management Systems
      1. The Organizational Aspect of RIMS
      2. RIMS as a Metadata Repository
      3. Main driver for RIMS and vendors
    3. Information Security Management System
      1. The organizational aspect of ISMS
      2. ISMS as a metadata repository
      3. Main driver for the ISMS and vendors
    4. General Data Protection Repository
      1. Organizational aspect of DPR
      2. The DPR as a Metadata Repository
      3. Main driver for the DPR and a comment about vendors
    5. Business Process Management Software
      1. Main driver for the BPMS
    6. The Ideal Setup of Information Metadata Repositories
      1. Overlapping Peripheral Capabilities for Information Metadata Repositories
    7. Summary
  6. 5. Knowledge Management
    1. Content Management System
    2. Knowledge Management System
    3. Learning Management Systems
    4. Quality Management System
    5. Collection Management System
    6. The Ideal Setup of Knowledge Metadata Repositories
      1. Overlapping Peripheral Capabilities for Information Metadata Repositories
    7. Summary
  7. 6. What Is the Meta Grid?
    1. The Meta Grid Manifesto
      1. The Meta Grid is the third wave of data decentralization
      2. The Meta Grid unlocks single-view-of-the-world monoliths
      3. The Meta Grid is incomplete
      4. The Meta Grid is simple, small and slow
    2. What the Meta Grid is and is not
    3. Documenting the Meta Grid
      1. Architecture Decisions
      2. Models
      3. Lists and data storage solutions
    4. Examples of the Meta Grid
      1. Data Types
      2. Application
      3. Data Model
      4. Integration
      5. Data Lineage
      6. Server
      7. Organization
      8. Process
    5. Summary
  8. 7. The VIRTUAL Data Discovery Team
    1. Our Problem: Managing Multiple Truths Across Teams
      1. Conway’s Law
      2. The Metadata Monolith
    2. Our Solution: The Data Discovery Team
      1. The Reverse (inverse) Conway Maneuver
    3. What is the Data Discovery Team?
      1. Structure of the Data Discovery Team
      2. On the political and technological mess of companies
      3. Embracing the mess and providing a way forward
    4. How the Data Discovery Team Collaborates
      1. Collaborating with Enterprise Architects
      2. Collaborating working with the Data Protection Officer
      3. Collaborating with the Chief Information Security Officer
      4. Collaborating with Records- and Information Management
      5. Collaborating with Data Science Teams
    5. Summary
  9. About the Author

Product information

  • Title: Fundamentals of Metadata Management
  • Author(s): Ole Olesen-Bagneux
  • Release date: October 2025
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781098162825