Metadata Repositories

A metadata repository holds metadata, that's clear. However, an SDMX or DDI compliant metadata repository can play a key role in making data meaningful and assisting in its analysis, by making it accessible to intelligent applications. Today, much metadata is collected, stored in a repository, extracted for publication as HTML pages on a website, or made available to internal applications.

SDMX and DDI standards change this by making the metadata available to all that need it and have access rights to it. This can mean access from a data portal (which needs to tie the data with the metadata) where the metadata are discovered via a registry, or from specific systems which are more tightly linked to the repository.

Both the SDMX and the DDI standards support metadata dissemination formats. SDMX specifies a metadata query XML document which, because of the model neutral architecture of the SDMX meta-model for metadata, works equally well with DDI metadata. Therefore with one or both of the SDMX and DDI standards you will be able to control the metadata repository just like you can control the data warehouse with SDMX data standards. Using a registry for registration and notification can turn metadata "push" into metadata "pull". SDMX registry standards can even deliver metadata on the fly where the metadata need not be in a central repository at all, but merely registered and harvested when required.

Metadata Technology consultants have been involved with metadata and metadata standards for many years, and have worked on a variety of projects concerned with metadata, including projects sponsored by the European Commission.

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