Metadata Management and Data Governance - Data Governance: Creating Value from Information Assets - page 50

Easy to Access and Integrated
Business metadata must be integrated in the application so that it is easily
accessible by the end user. For example, an end user must be able hover his
cursor on top of a field on his computer screen for a help screen to appear.
This help screen should describe the business data of the element that the
end user has selected. The Business metadata should appear to give a clear
definition of the data element as well as an example.
Exposed
Business metadata represented by business rules ideally needs to be held in a
business repository and exposed to the business. The business users would be
able to change the business rules without the need of an ETL (extract, transfer,
and load) or IT programmer. This allows for speed of business processing.
Many tools provide for a data dictionary that supports Business meta-
data including metadata columns in the data model or a separate data
dictionary. A data dictionary is a repository of definitions of the Business
metadata. Often the data dictionary is stored in a database table or Excel®
spreadsheet. The Business metadata should be stored in a centralized
repository. This will provide a single data dictionary to manage. For
example, in Figure 3.5, Informant Type is defined as “indicates the human
source of the information.”
Technical Metadata
Technical metadata describes the data structures and formats, such as
table types, data types, indices, and partitioning method. For example,
FIGURE 3.5
Data dictionary example.