Metadata publishing is the process of making

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

data element In metadata, the term data element is an atomic unit of data that has precise meaning or precise semantics. A data element has: # An identification such as a data element name # A clear data element definition # One or more representation terms ...

s available to external users, both people and machines using a formal review process and a commitment to change control processes. Metadata publishing is the foundation upon which advanced

distributed computing A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...

functions are being built. But like building foundations, care must be taken in metadata publishing systems to ensure the structural integrity of the systems built on top of them.

Definition of metadata publishing

Published metadata has the following characteristics: # Metadata structures available to the general public on a public web site or by a download # There is a documented review and approval process for adding or updating data elements to the system # New releases are made available without disturbing prior versions # A publishing organization that makes a commitment to change control process

Benefits of metadata publishing

When classifying benefits of metadata publishing two groups are usually considered. External parties are usually consumers of information that are not part of the publishing organization. Internal parties are usually the various business units or departments within an organization.

Benefits to external parties

# Allows external systems (both people and agents) to have a clear understanding of the

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

s in a system # Allows third parties to build semantic maps between

data model A data model is an abstract model that organizes elements of data and standardizes how they relate to one another and to the properties of real-world entities. For instance, a data model may specify that the data element representing a car be c ...

s and import and export data between systems # Promotes

service oriented architecture In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provide ...

s and allow horizontal sharing of information between traditional

information silo An information silo, or a group of such silos, is an insular management system in which one information system or subsystem is incapable of reciprocal operation with others that are, or should be, related. Thus information is not adequately shar ...

s # Allows systems to participate in accurately indexed and

federated search Federated search retrieves information from a variety of sources via a search application built on top of one or more search engines. A user makes a single query request which is distributed to the search engines, databases or other query engines ...

processes

Benefits to internal parties

# allows parties from diverse business units to agree on shared data definitions and separate department or function specific definitions # makes

Extract, transform, load In computing, extract, transform, load (ETL) is a three-phase process where data is extracted, transformed (cleaned, sanitized, scrubbed) and loaded into an output data container. The data can be collated from one or more sources and it can also ...

(ETL) operations more precise for data warehousing # allows user interface designers to access a common pool of screen and report header labels # promotion of

model-driven architecture Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is a software design approach for the development of software systems. It provides a set of guidelines for the structuring of specifications, which are expressed as models. Model Driven Architecture is a kind of doma ...

Objections to metadata publishing

* Organizations that publish their metadata could make it easier for unauthorized people to find sensitive data if they breach an organization's firewall * Vendors that publish their metadata risk customers creating tools that could allow their customers to export their data from computer systems, therefore making it easier to migrate off of a vendor's system

Core process in metadata publishing

The following are some of the core processes in metadata publishing # Gathering of metadata requirements # Selection of metadata registry and metadata publishing tools # Training of metadata concepts to project participants # Stakeholder group formation # Metadata harvesting # Glossary consolidation # Initial upper ontology construction (abstract data elements) # Draft data element loading # Data element review process # Publishing approved metadata elements in a variety of output formats (see below) # Creation and maintenance of versions and depreciation of unused or redundant data elements

File format metadata publishing

Organizations that create applications that store data in file systems can also publish metadata definitions. One common way to perform this is to store application data in a compressed XML file format. The XML files can be uncompressed and validated against an external XML Schema. An example of this is done by the Open Source

FreeMind FreeMind is a free mind mapping application written in Java, which is further developed by the fork Freeplane until today (2021). FreeMind itself was last updated in 2014. FreeMind is licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2. It p ...

tool.

Metadata publishing formats

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...

- used for browsing a web site and indexing by text-based search engines #

Web Ontology Language The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a family of knowledge representation languages for authoring ontologies. Ontologies are a formal way to describe taxonomies and classification networks, essentially defining the structure of knowledge for vario ...

(OWL) - used by metadata search engines such as Swoogle #

XML Metadata Interchange The XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) is an Object Management Group (OMG) standard for exchanging metadata information via Extensible Markup Language (XML). It can be used for any metadata whose metamodel can be expressed in Meta-Object Facil ...

(XMI) - OMG standard for exchanging metadata # Common Warehouse Metamodel (CMW) - OMG standard for data warehouse metadata # Topic maps - an ISO standard for the representation and interchange of knowledge, with an emphasis on the findability of information. # KM3 or

Kernel Meta Meta Model KM3 or Kernel Meta Meta Model is a neutral computer language to write metamodels and to define Domain Specific Languages. KM3 has been defined at INRIA and is available under the Eclipse platform. References ...

as used in the Metamodel Zoos. Th
AtlanticZoo
is an open source library of more than 100 metamodels under EPL License.
KM3
is a simple

Domain Specific Language A domain-specific language (DSL) is a computer language specialized to a particular application domain. This is in contrast to a general-purpose language (GPL), which is broadly applicable across domains. There are a wide variety of DSLs, ranging ...

for specifying metamodels. A number of transformations are available to translate from KM3 to other notations like XMI.

External links

MetaQuery examples
provided by Ambient Webs LLC
SWED portal
provided by WordPressHelp
Microsoft Metadata Publishing Example
{dead link, date=January 2018 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes Electronic publishing

Publishing Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...