The Metadata Era

A potential customer asked me last week to help them illustrate why having multiple metadata streams in a common framework is important. She needed to present the differences between single purpose tool sets (e.g. permissions reporting tools and audit tools) and a solution that makes use of a true metadata framework , but in terms of real world use cases– what can’t I get done without a framework?

For example, it’s pretty intuitive that you can’t identify permissions problems (like folders exposed to the everyone group) without enumerating access control lists, but it’s not so intuitive that you can’t easily fix them without a framework that can use the audit trail to determine who actually needs permissions to each folder.  Here is a chart that lists specific data governance use cases, and the metadata streams that are required for each one:

For more information, read the white paper: The Metadata Imperative.

David Gibson, Director of Strategic Accounts and Technical Marketing