If I understand you correctly, I would rename the first one from Context Metadata to either Structural Matadata or Intrinsic Metadata. It is the metadata that can be discovered or derived directly from the content of the object.

Your second category is metadata intentionally added to the object.

The third category is metadata stored outside the object, with pointers referring to the object.

I like it.

You are correct James...

Hi Todd,
What are your thoughts about these metadata classes:

Descriptive Metadata - Metadata that supports the discovery of an object. It describes the intellectual content of an object in order to aid indexing, resource discovery, and retrieval. Example elements are audience, creator, title, subject, etc. As you can see, it's similar to your thoughts on contextual metadata.

Administrative Metadata - Metadata employed to effectively manage a given object’s life-cycle. Administrative metadata may also include rights and access information that govern the object.

System Metadata - Metadata that describes the objects existence within a physical entity. In other words, the file name and size of a document on a computer. Transient in nature, system metadata is rarely described in great detail vis-à-vis having all of its elements described within a metadata application profile.

Structural Metadata - I mainly use DCMI's view.

There is one final class I'm struggling to articulate. It deals with the management of a metadata record. The reason is I'm working on a CMS project where the metadata record of an object will last longer than the actual object it describes. For instance, say a report is transferred from the CMS to another system (e.g. a records management system). A copy of the metadata record along, with some notification of what happen to the report, will have to remain the CMS in order to tell a user where to go if someone searches for it. Overtime then, the metadata record would be eventually deleted since the object is being managed in another system.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Mike Bannister
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Hi folks - interesting Blog, Todd. I'm doing my PhD thesis right (data collection complete, analysis underway). Todd was kind enough to participate in the pilot phase. I'm looking at end user meta-data (its influence on user attitudes and level of use of a warehouse)in a data warehouse/BI context. I've come up with the following general categorization for meta-data that might useful to 'information consumers' (users) of a warehouse.

Definitional
Definitional metadata is any information that conveys the meaning of data in the warehouse (or, for example on reports or OLAP cubes) to end users. Included in this category are business definitions, calculations, business rules and allowable values. Definitional metadata answers the question: what does this data mean, from a business perspective?

Quality
Quality metadata advises users about the currency (freshness), accuracy, validity or completeness of the data in the warehouse (or on reports, queries or OLAP cubes). Quality metadata answers the business user's question: does this data possess sufficient quality for me to use it for a specific purpose?

Navigational
Navigational metadata provides users with a means to search for data (or other resource, such as a report). In other words, navigational metadata lets users 'Google' the data warehouse to search for what they need and to get an understanding of relationships between data objects of various types. Navigational metadata answers the question: where can I find the data I need?

Lineage
Lineage information tells users about the original source of data in the warehouse (or on a report) and describes what has been done to the data (for example, cleansing, transformation or aggregation) prior to being loaded into the warehouse. Lineage information answers the user's questions: where did this data originate, and what was done to it prior to being loaded into the warehouse?

I know that this is a narrow classification (due to BI context) but would be interested in any feedback.

I guess I'm the blog stopper.