Alpha, Beta, Meta...

Having learned about DBMS architectures, its not time to talk about the actual content of these databases.

Specifically, there is data, and then there is Metadata.

Metadata: the Alphadog

Metadata is data about other data, so it gets a fancy name.

Metadata can fall into 3 categories:

• Descriptive: Information describing the intellectual content of the object
• Structural: Information that ties each object to thers to make up logical units
• Administrative: Information used to manage the object or control access to it

Why bother with it?

At times, it is not convenient to deal with the actual data contained in the database. By using metadata, a database administrator (DBA) can "organize, locate, manipulate and otherwise work with data when it is not necessary or desired to actually deal with the data itself." (www.linfo.org)

For further reading, please go here.

References:

"Metadata." en.wikipedia.org. 3 Apr 2009. 6 Apr 2009

"Metadata definition." linfo.org. 21 Mar 2006. 6 apr 2009