Fundamentals of Metadata Management

Chapter 1. Toward Holistic Metadata Management

In this chapter, we will unpack the contents of the entire book. First, we’ll take a brief look at the management disciplines that work with metadata in companies that use distinct metadata repositories—the topic of Part I of the book. Then, we’ll discuss the concept of a data discovery team, which can coordinate these metadata repositories to improve enterprise-wide search—the topic of Part II. Finally, we’ll run through the idea of the meta grid: a decentralized architecture for metadata and the topic of Part III.

Ready? Here we go!

Metadata Management Happens in Many Places

This book divides the domains that work with metadata management into four categories:¹

IT management

This domain uses metadata repositories to perform strategic planning of enterprise architecture, maintain the existing IT infrastructure, and preserve the immediate past in backup systems.

Data management

This domain uses a set of technologies to store, extract, transform, observe, and ingest data across the IT landscape. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, this subpart of the data management toolset was called the modern data stack. However, this term is declining in usage and has been declared dead.² Several maps of data management technologies (including metadata repositories) exist. The most exhaustive and well known is the “MAD (Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Data) Landscape” by Matt Turck and Aman Kabeer.

Information management