Metadata: a user's view

摘要

An analysis is presented of the uses of metadata from four aspectsof database operations:(1) search, query, retrieval; (2) ingest, qualitycontrol, processing; (3) application to application transfer; (4)storage, archive. Typical degrees of database functionality, rangingfrom simple file retrieval to interdisciplinary global query withmetadatabase-user dialog and involving many distributed autonomousdatabases, are ranked in approximate order of increasing sophisticationof the required knowledge representation. An architecture is outlinedfor implementing such functionality in many different disciplinarydomains utilizing a variety of off the shelf database managementsubsystems and processor software, each specialized to a differentabstract data model