Global Practices: Big Data & Analytics Practice

There are a number of similar sounding terminologies that a user would come across when exploring a data catalog. In this section we look at the important terms and how they are related to each other.

Metadata is data that provides more information about the data itself but does not include the actual data. This information could be basic details such as name, type, owner, etc. or more complex information such as statistical data, tags, quality details, etc.

There are a number of different types of metadata – technical and business being the most common ones.

Technical metadata is the technical information that is related to format, structure and storage details of the data. Some examples include database name, table name, column name, data type, data lineage, data stats and so on.

Business metadata is the information that provides meaning to the data in everyday language. Examples include keywords, comments, description explaining its significance, quality, tags and so on.