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What is Metadata Management?
Need
to manage metadata management and want practical standards and best
practices for information management governance and accountability?
What
is data management?
Data
Management is a sub-set of information management that governs
organization and control of the structure and design, storage,
movement, security and quality of information.
What
is metadata?
Metadata
is data describing or specifying other data or defining and organizing
characteristics that need to be known about data, including (but not
limited to) information about physical data representations, technical
and business processes, rules and constraints, and data
structures.
What
is metadata management?
Appropriate
metadata management practices enable information used by management in
its daily decision-making and in its long-term strategic planning to be
accurate, accessible, complete, consistent, timely, valid and relevant
and assists in maintaining high integrity over production data.
Metadata management
standards and best practices checklist
All information management metadata
should be adequately controlled and
documented in an approved and published metadata repository.
The business owner should
maintain business metadata, including
business
rules, organizational metadata and transformational metadata. Business
metadata should include:
- Who:
- Owns the data i.e. data guardian;
- Maintains the data i.e. data steward;
- What
the data means i.e. entity, attribute
definitions and sample data;
- Where:
- The data comes from i.e. how is it
collected;
- The data is stored i.e. application
system;
- When
data is collected i.e. OLTP, daily feed,
monthly feed; and
- How is it used e.g. management information,
marketing analytics
The IT
owner should
maintain application
metadata, including technical and physical metadata. Application data
should include:
- Who:
- Maintains
the application i.e. IT owner;
- Maintains the database i.e. production DBA;
and
- Is responsible for change control
- The data
looks
like e.g. logical/physical
data models;
- The data means e.g. table/column
definitions, and sample data;
- The data profile looks like e.g. for each
table and column, the number of rows, min/max values, distinct values
- Interfaces feed into and feed out of the
application
- Where:
- The data originates from e.g. system of
record
- Server
- Database name
- IP address
- The data goes to e.g. downstream
systems/applications
- It is archived including near and off-site
storage
- When
it is updated; backed-up, archived, stored
off-site
- How it is moved between applications e.g.
transfer mechanisms
Metadata best practices checklist
Metadata
should be stored in an approved enterprise metadata repository that
complies with an approved information technology standards list.
Appropriate
backup and recovery
processes and procedures should be created, approved and maintained.
The
business owner of the data that the metadata supports for accuracy,
timeliness, relevancy, consistency and validity should periodically
review metadata
Maintenance
of metadata (e.g., additions, deletions, modifications, etc.) should be
assigned to a data steward and documented for reference
purposes. This
will ensure that appropriate segregation
of duties exists and that the
metadata remains accurate, timely, relevant, consistent and
valid.
qulAll
changes to metadata shall follow a
documented and approved change management process.
All
metadata users should be assigned
access rights and privileges.
Accountabilities
for each key role
involved in metadata management
should be defined and communicated to all stakeholders.
Summary...
Metadata
management is required to ensure successful management of information
management. Standards and best practices should be defined and managed
to ensure success.
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