Share

• Tweet

Home > Metadata

Metadata

What is Metadata? Metadata is information that describes another set of data. In a business intelligence (BI) platform, metadata links information in a data store to business entities and rules that define a BI application.

Using Metadata for Reporting and Analysis

At the lowest level, metadata translates table and column information from a data warehouse into meaningful business terms. It unlocks valuable information stored within data warehouses by serving as an intuitive map to guide business users in building reports and conducting analyses.

Metadata in Enterprise-Wide BI

Today's BI platforms need centralized, reusable, and dynamic metadata to support enterprise‐wide BI standardization. MicroStrategy provides the only metadata in the industry that is ready for BI standardization by incorporating the following architectural design tenets:

• Abstraction in a single, centralized location
  MicroStrategy's metadata is stored in a central repository, where it stores mappings of business concepts to underlying data structures as well as layouts and report configurations. As a result, all users, regardless of the interface through which they access the application, receive a single version of the truth.
• Fully reusable well-defined metadata objects
  MicroStrategy's metadata repository is comprised of multiple layers of well-defined objects, with each layer serving as the foundation upon which to build the next. This approach results in the broadest range of reusable objects, increasing development speed and minimizing maintenance costs.
• Dynamic, object-oriented metadata objects
  Every MicroStrategy metadata object contains "pointers" to other metadata objects. Whenever an object is used, it is dynamically assembled from the latest versions of all the other objects contained in the object. Changes to an object automatically cascade to related objects.
• Storage in a standard relational database
  In contrast to other vendors' proprietary metadata storage formats, MicroStrategy's metadata is stored in a relational database. This approach increases the scalability and manageability of BI applications.

Learn More about Metadata

• Chapter 4 in An Architecture for Enterprise Business Intelligence offers further insights on Metadata and the Logical Business Model. This 367-page document is an outstanding complimentary resource to help CIOs, IT professionals, business managers, and academics understand, appreciate and evaluate enterprise-class business intelligence software.
• Learn more about MicroStrategy Architect, a development interface that maintains business applications in a central metadata repository.