Skip to content

A Daily Lexicon of Trustworthy Data

005·74

metadata

/ˈmɛt.əˌdeɪ.tə/ - n.

1 [colloq.] Everything we know about the data except whether anyone agreed what it means.Keep. Punchy.This is the problem.

Working definition

2. Data that describes other data — its meaning, structure, origin, ownership, and quality — enabling discovery, governance, and trust.

Filed

Seen in the wild · 7

OpenTelemetry standardized the labels. The business meaning still lives outside the trace.Metric Theater
The Company That Sells the Single Source Becomes a Row in Someone Else'sPlatform Tunnel Vision
The Lineage Graph Is Free Now, Right Up to Where It HurtsProcess Debt
It Took 31 Vendors To Agree On What Revenue MeansDefinition Drift
We Bought Active Metadata to Avoid Deciding Who Owns the DataShiny Object Pursuit
Active metadata is everywhere. The people it describes are still somewhere else.Shiny Object Pursuit
Lineage is mandatory for the audit and partial in practice.Owner Missing

See also

business glossaryA glossary in which the term 'owner' is the only entry without one.
data dictionaryA faithful description of the column named 'cust_status_2_final', whose meaning died with its author.
schema designAn afternoon of careful structure followed by two years of columns named after the ticket that demanded them.