Metadata Management 101: Know Your Data
Metadata Management helps organizations understand, manage, and get value from their vast and varied data environments.
Organizations collect tremendous amounts of data, stored in various sources and formats. Data owners need a way to understand where and what that data is to be able to manage it.
Understanding the data environment is essential for organizations to properly manage the data that they are responsible for for a variety of reasons including:
- Maximize the value of data by providing data users context to select the best data for analysis
- Maintain a clean data environment to reduce unnecessary storage cost
- Accelerate cloud migration projects with a view of the current data environment, priorities, and data users
- Reduce risk by identifying data that needs to be safeguarded to protect sensitive information
What is Metadata?
Metadata is information about the data: it tells users essential information about the data. For example, when it was created, where it is stored, who is using it, how it is being used.
Every data asset collected or created has related metadata to describe what it is, where it is, and how it is being used. Metadata is typically described in 3 categories: Technical, Operational, and Business Metadata.
Technical Metadata
Technical Metadata provides information on what the data is. It describes the characteristics of the data and inventory of objects as tables or files, describes lineage to know where the data comes from, how it is structured, and how it relates to other similar data.
Operational Metadata
Operational Metadata provides information about how the data is being used and the data lifecycle. It describes who has access to use it, who is using it, when it was created, and when it will be due to retire.
Business Metadata
Business Metadata provides information on the business purpose of the data object. It describes the purpose that the data was collected for, agreements, consent, policies and regulations, and a business glossary as the source of truth for consistent definitions
What is Metadata Management?
Considering the vast amount of data that every organization collects, processes, and manages, and that every data element has associated metadata, organizations need a way to collect and manage the metadata to make it usable.
Metadata Management is the initiative to describe the data context and identify what the data is – so that it can be optimized as a valuable resource to the organization. Metadata management does not manage the physical data, but provides insight, like a detailed map of the data.
BigID and Metadata Management
BigID discovers, organizes and presents metadata so that organizations gain actionable data intelligence and get more value from their data – all in a unified data inventory. BigID applies four lenses within Discovery-in-Depth, enabling organizations to gain deeper intelligence about data:
- Correlation to find relationships between data elements
- Cluster Analysis to identify similar and duplicate data
- Classification to determine what the data is
- Catalog to view and discover data with related metadata
BigID applies advanced machine learning and NLP for data discovery, as well as leveraging ML to automate labeling, profiling, and more.
The metadata generated, managed, and uncovered by BigID is essential for any organization that needs to maintain a data environment enabled for sharing and productivity. BigID is able to surface metadata insights that were once impossible to find using traditional data management tools. Global enterprises rely on BigID to automate data discovery and metadata management to maximize the value of their vast data.
Schedule a demo to see how BigID can enhance, enrich, and extend metadata management.
