Introductory

You've probably heard the word "metadata," but what exactly is this mysterious information? Equally important how should it be handled? Failure to adequately capture and preserve metadata associated with electronic discovery materials has been considered spoliation of evidence and grounds for significant discovery sanctions. Conversely, a failure to erase metadata from outgoing law firm correspondence can inadvertently communicate a wealth of inappropriate information to recipients. This article reveals how metadata is created, its purpose, and situations where metadata can assume significant importance.

What is metadata?

People normally define an electronic document, spreadsheet, e-mail message or other digital data as the content they can see, the information intentionally added by the document's author. However, almost all computer programs automatically add additional information to a document, usually storing it at the beginning or end of the electronic file where the program can easily find it. This information is generically known as "metadata."

When a file is attached to an e-mail message or copied from one location to another, much of its associated metadata is also transferred with the file. Some metadata, however, is automatically updated to reflect the new location or other actions involving the file. As a result, computer files that appear identical when viewed or printed may have different metadata.

The world of information technology has "grown-up" dramatically in the last fifteen years -- the term of my comparably short career. From the days of punching cards and feeding deck readers at midnight at the university computer lab to the world of dot-coms, electronic business, and business intelligence, one might believe that they have seen it all.

But not even close … One can only imagine what the next fifteen years have in store for us. Post-Y2k and for the foreseeable future, the need and speed to manage data, information, and knowledge will (if it has not already) become THE business driver.

Data within your database is just that, data. It becomes information only when you can effectively extract and distribute in an understandable form. Using meta-data has come a long way; it allows for free-flowing information and is putting the ability to extract information into the hands of end-users.

When I first started my career in data processing, I began as a COBOL programmer. Back then, meta-data was strictly “data about data” and, in those days, we had to rely on s FDs, copy books, and a scarce set of documentation that comprised our meta-data. Such resources told us where data was located and what particular objects (tables) and columns meant.

Today, meta-data has grown into a complete subject area encompassing such terms as Knowledge Management, Corporate Data Dictionaries, and Enterprise Meta-Data Repositories. All of these classifications have the single goal to categorize the underlying information buried within databases so that end users can get to information faster. They do this by employing tools that allow end users to unlock the mysteries of what information is available and where it is located.

Imagine that you are cornered in the break room by the CEO or called into a sales meeting and asked to produce a report that describes demographic information for current customers. This task seems to be quick and easy, at least at face value. But, you quickly remember that you have distributed databases that control different product lines, and the way objects have been defined within those databases are quite different. To compound the issue, your CEO is starting to describe “customers” as anyone who has purchased products or services from you including potential customers that are not stored in a database yet but are in multiple spreadsheets maintained by your sales reps. No doubt, it is becoming obvious that these requirements will be changing and you begin to feel like you will be trying to hit a moving target.

Meta Tags are lines of HTML code embedded into web pages that are used by search engines to store information about your site. These "tags" contain keywords, descriptions, copyright information, site titles and more. They are among the numerous things that the search engines look for, when trying to evaluate a web site.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to help oversee a client's business intelligence project that was running behind schedule. By the time I joined the project, the requirements and design had been completed, and the delivery team had finished most of its development work. The ETL process was working properly, and several reports had been developed. However, the project had been stalled for several weeks, having made little or no progress. The reason for the delay was that each of the reports that had been developed needed to be "certified."

Approximately 15 reports had been requested for the first release of the system. The requirements team had been told that most of these would replace reports that users were currently receiving. The team was provided with a set of the existing reports, which were mainly Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. The reports looked simple enough. Each column had a heading that identified the data it contained, and the team was told where the data was located. An estimate was made for how long the reports would take to develop. So what was the problem? In a word, metadata.