Word on the street is “data is the new gold.” Big tech giants are building a great deal of their business on data while more conservative companies are gradually beginning to realise that without it, they will soon end up like a fish out of water. But experts and the general public are often and wrongfully neglecting an essential part of the data phenomenon: metadata.
Never heard of it? Or maybe you have but have no idea what the term metadata means? Before you start freaking out about this professional-sounding expression, we have got some reassuring news for you – you probably already use metadata on a regular basis and just do not know it.
What is metadata?
We could easily describe metadata to you using a series of professional definitions from books on IT, but we would hate to put you through that. So let us keep things brief and simple: metadata is data about data. So in other words, it describes other (primary) data in detail. Metadata provides information on primary data and serves as a sneak peek of the bigger picture.
How it works in practice
For a better understanding, let us give an example from the life of a small entrepreneur.
Imagine working as a freelance photographer and storing thousands upon thousands of photos on your computer’s hard drive. Keeping track of so many photos and sorting them by certain parameters can be a tough nut to crack. Fortunately, there’s metadata. Every photo is made up of several different types of metadata. As a photographer, you will only use exactly the ones you need. For instance, photos contain the following metadata:
The primary data in this case is the photographs while their metadata is the parameters mentioned above (dimensions, time stamp, etc.).
So you have individual metadata on your photos, but what to do with them? You can sort them by a parameter of your choosing. For instance, suppose you want to filter only photos taken on the 10th of May 2021. In the software on your computer you will simply sort by date and then voila... out of thousands of photos, only the ones from May 10th are listed. This is exactly the principle of metadata – to provide as much information as possible about primary data so that you can better work with it, manage it, and above all, search for it quickly.
Where do you come across metadata
The example with the photographer is, of course, just one example. Metadata can be used in practically all fields, even in places where you would least expect it. For decades, if not hundreds of years, metadata has been used in libraries, offices, and in companies that create and store at least some form of database. Which is practically every company today.
Here are some examples of what metadata is commonly used for and how you can use it too:
Websites and online marketing
In terms of data, websites are a chapter in their own right. Every page on a website has its own descriptive meta captions and meta descriptions that tell search engines (like Google) what’s on the page. This metadata is widely used in content marketing.
Customer databases
One large database or several customer databases in one. Not even the devil himself could keep track of them. Metadata helps sort through these databases so you can easily find what you need.
Libraries and catalogues
Author's name, year of publication, publisher, and registration number. This is all metadata used by librarians to find specific books for readers.
Databases of products and components
These databases consist of even more data than customer records. But if you use your product or component metadata wisely, you will save a lot of time and nerves.
A better understanding of data and relief for business systems
So why should your company be interested in metadata? Well for one, it makes it easier for employees to find data in databases. Business management, in turn, will help them to better understand the data and to look at it from a different perspective. Last but not least, thanks to metadata, you will get an overview of how to improve archives or records that, until now, no one has been able to know what’s what. Aside from that, you will relieve company systems and save a considerable amount of money.
How to manage metadata
Of course, when working with metadata, you cannot do without quality software that can process it. There's a number of tools like it, each of which works a bit differently. We provide customers with the CEOS MetaData tool, for example, which automatically analyses and manages business data.
Want to know how to use metadata management in your company to streamline working with data? Let us know and will be happy to answer any questions you might have, or we will immediately prepare an offer just for you.