Metadata, guidelines, and policy

This chapter explores how metadata relates to data quality and how metadata can be used as a management tool for driving enterprise information policy. In every metadata framework, there are some generic elements that can tag most data or metadata elements in the system. The chapter enumerates some of the generic metadata elements, such as contact information, location, description, iconic representation, keywords, help source, version, and menus.. The notion of metadata starts with the basics generic elements and moves through data types and domains, schema, its usage and summarization. Then, the management of the sort of reference data and metadata domains, and data quality rules is done. Finally, the chapter describes how the publication of metadata throughout the organization can improve knowledge management and data quality overall and that how information policies are integrated closely with metadata.