Chapter 16 - In Summary

Abstract

Business metadata emphasizes the most important aspect of IT: making computers and information technology useful to the businesspeople themselves. Business metadata is about clarification and meaning; it is about enhancing reports and one-dimensional data with background information, allowing data to be turned into information and the information to be turned into wisdom. This chapter focuses mainly on the value that business metadata brings to the business and the major industry trends that focus on facilitating both the capture and dissemination of business metadata. Like most things of value, the capture and dissemination of business metadata require discipline, both of which are both important to the business metadata equation. The essence of business metadata is reducing or eliminating the barriers of communication between the human and the computer so that the data conveyed from reports, data warehouses, and information systems in general can be crystal clear and can facilitate business actions and decision making. This chapter reviews these barriers. Further, it discusses several topics that are learned from implementation of business metadata: use of the business rules approach to manage business change, virtual knowledge sharing through groupware, enterprise search, and how business metadata can facilitate finding documents faster. In addition, a few resources are listed concerning conferences and Web sites specializing in some of the areas that are labeled “business metadata.”