Metadata provides consistency, clarity, and data lineage. It defines structured information about documents and content like author, title, and keywords. There are three main types - descriptive, structural, and administrative. Metadata is used to identify, manage, retrieve, and track usage of content. It provides consistency of definitions between different terminology, clarity of relationships between entities, and clarity of where data originated from and how it has changed over time.

1. Metadata Advantages of local
Metadata
By: Azeem Sultan
Student at: GCUF

2. Definition
Metadata can be defined as “structured information about a
document, data, or other information content”.
Examples of metadata are author, title, subject keywords, date of
publication, security classification, access permissions, and rights
information and so on.
A metadata schema or metadata framework is an organized table that
specifies what metadata will be gathered, how it is defined, how it will
be collected, and what purposes it should serve.

3. Types of Metadata
There are three main types of metadata:
• Descriptive metadata describes a resource for purposes such as discovery
and identification. It can include elements such as title, abstract, author, and
keywords.
• Structural metadata indicates how compound objects are put together, for
example, how pages are ordered to form chapters.
• Administrative metadata provides information to help manage a resource,
such as when and how it was created, file type and other technical
information, and who can access it.

4. Metadata is used for four main purposes
• To identify content
• To manage content
• To retrieve content
• To track usage of content

5. Identify Content
Metadata identifies content to give it a unique characterization
distinguishing it from other pieces of content.
Identification metadata is descript metadata, and can include elements
such as:
Unique resource identifier (URI)
Filename or file reference number
Author
Title

6. Manage Content
Metadata plays a very important function in helping systems manage content. This
is so that the system knows, for example, who should have access to the document,
which applications should be used to display the file, what operations should be
conducted on a file at given times or within certain workflows.
In this function, administrative and structural metadata capture things like:
Version number
Archiving date
Security and access permissions
Rights management settings
Retention schedule
File format
Linked resources

7. Retrieve Content
Helping users to find and retrieve content is the function of metadata
that is most closely connected with taxonomies.
In this function, descriptive metadata includes things like:
Taxonomy topics
Subject keywords added by users
Document descriptions

8. Track usage of content
• A more sophisticated use of metadata is to track the usage of a document and to connect
content to other content. A well-known example of this is the Amazon message “people
who bought this book also bought…” This information is collected automatically by the
system and it associates content based on tracking user behaviors upon the content.
• In this function, examples of usage metadata might be:
• User ratings
• Downloads data (who has downloaded it, or how often)
• Forwarding data (who has forwarded it, to whom)
• Search terms (search terms used immediately prior to a download)
• Links data (number and source of hyperlinks pointing to the content; links from the
content to other pieces of content)
• Metadata is critical information about information and content that allows us to
navigate, find, and manage our key business information assets.

9. Advantages
• Consistency of definitions
• Clarity of relationships
• Clarity of data lineage

10. Consistency of definitions
• Metadata contains information about data that helps reconcile the
difference in terminology such as "clients" and "customers,"
"revenue" and "sales," etc.

11. Clarity of relationships
• Metadata helps resolve ambiguity and inconsistencies when
determining the associations between entities stored throughout
data environment. For example, if a customer declares a "beneficiary"
in one application, and this beneficiary is called a "participant" in
another application, metadata definitions would help clarify the
situation.

12. Clarity of data lineage
• Metadata contains information about the origins of a particular data
set and can be granular enough to define information at the attribute
level; metadata may maintain allowed values for a data attribute, its
proper format, location, owner, and steward. Operationally, metadata
may maintain auditable information about users, applications, and
processes that create, delete, or change data, the exact timestamp of
the change, and the authorization that was used to perform these
actions.

13. Data Formats
• Metadata defines formats of data.
1. .SHP
2. .IMG
3. .GDB
4. .CAD etc