Fundamentals of Metadata Management

Chapter 7. Why We Have Been Doing Metadata Management Wrong

In the previous chapters, we discussed a wealth of metadata repositories, each within a specific domain and each leveraging a specific capability—managing everything from endpoints to future states of application portfolios and data discovery, from information security to the quality of enterprise learning and knowledge. Pondering the extensive list of tooling needed to manage all these capabilities based on metadata, we can see that one thing is clear: the total sum of capabilities leveraged by metadata management tools and their subsequent repositories will never be consolidated into one technology and will never be carried out by one management practice, let alone one team.

Until now, we have not looked at most of the metadata repositories that we have discussed in their totality. However, that is what this book has set out to do: create a view of many repositories that has hitherto not been juxtaposed and compared. The purpose of this view is the following: across these many, many repositories, organizations register the same type of metadata—each time slightly differently structured—to carry out tasks in their respective teams. However, this is a substantial waste of time, and it creates inefficient, redundant, and even opposing depictions of the IT landscape.

Tip

If you are thinking, “Couldn’t AI play a role in this?” then you are absolutely right. Check out Parts II and III.

Different Practices Have Different ...