Metadata

Metadata is data that provides information about other data. Many distinct types of metadata exist, including descriptive metadata, structural metadata, administrative metadata, reference metadata, and statistical metadata.

In my last post, I described one of the most used applications of Dublin Core Metadata - RDF. In today's post, I will describe second most used applications of Dublin Core Metadata - Web Ontology Language (OWL).

The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a family of knowledge representation languages for authoring ontology. Ontology is a formal way to describe taxonomy and classification networks, essentially defining the structure of knowledge for various domains: the nouns represent classes of objects and the verbs represent relations between the objects.

The Dublin Core Schema is a small set of vocabulary terms that can be used to describe different resources.

Dublin Core Metadata may be used for multiple purposes, from simple resource description, to combining metadata vocabularies of different metadata standards, to providing inter-operability for metadata vocabularies in the Linked data cloud and Semantic web implementations.

Most used applications of Dublin Core Metadata are RDF and OWL. I will describe OWL in my next post.

RDF stands for Resource Description Framework. It is a standard model for data interchange on the Web. RDF has features that facilitate data merging even if the underlying schemas differ, and it specifically supports the evolution of schemas over time without requiring all the data consumers to be changed.

In part one of this post, I described using metadata in SharePoint. In this part two, I will describe metadata management.

Managed metadata makes it easier for Term Store Administrators to maintain and adapt your metadata as business needs evolve. You can update a term set easily. And, new or updated terms automatically become available when you associate a Managed Metadata column with that term set. For example, if you merge multiple terms into one term, content that is tagged with these terms is automatically updated to reflect this change. You can specify multiple synonyms (or labels) for individual terms. If your site is multilingual, you can also specify multilingual labels for individual terms.

Using metadata in SharePoint makes it easier to find content items. Metadata can be managed centrally in SharePoint and can be organized in a way that makes sense in your business. When the content across sites in an organization has consistent metadata, it is easier to find business information and data by using search. Search features such as the refinement panel, which displays on the left-hand side of the search results page, enable users to filter search results based on metadata.

SharePoint metadata management supports a range of approaches to metadata, from formal taxonomies to user-driven folksonomies. You can implement formal taxonomies through managed terms and term sets. You can also use enterprise keywords and social tagging, which enable site users to tag content with keywords that they choose. SharePoint enable organizations to combine the advantages of formal, managed taxonomies with the dynamic benefits of social tagging in customized ways.