Every other Thursday someone from the Innovation Design team helps make analytics and data consumable for all. With the help of Calabrio in-house experts, each video answers a question related to big data, analytics, and business intelligence.

This week we tackle the question what is “metadata”.

What is Metadata

The Setup

Hi Paul, I need you to lean on your former teaching experience. What exactly is metadata? Asking for a friend… Thanks, Johnna in Sales.

Metadata, Meta data, Metadata – I’ve got it. I’ve got talk to Matt.

One Quick (unrelated) Question

Hey Matt, just the man I’m looking for. Matt is our local data guru and designs how our product stores data. I’ve got a quick question for you. Well side question first: What’s with the bowties?

Oh, the bowties. Simple. I have two daughters and pretty much before I leave one day a week they have to approve my outfit. So I have to have two thumbs out before I can officially good out the door.  I’ve got to make my daughters happy.

Well it looks good. The matching shoes, all this, it looks great.  I hope my sons will be able to help me get dressed someday. Right now, I only help them get dressed.

One Quick Question

Alright my serious question though, What the heck really is metadata?

Metadata. You know that’s a good question. So, metadata is actually just the elements that help describe what something is – the data that describes what that thing is. So for example, this is an object and it’s a book.

Title: Think Like a Freak
Authors: Levitt & Dubner
Published: 2014
Pages: 304
Chapters: 9
Pages: 61,625

This book has chapters. Its chapters have paragraphs and sentences and exist on a page. The number of pages on this book are all elements of metadata that make up this book.

So the year that book was published could be an example of metadata?

That would be a great example of metadata.

So it’s like when we have a contact in our software. That contact might be a phone contact.

Agent: Leanna Ramirez
#: 8000-764-7813
Length: 304
Screen Recordings: yes
Sentiment: positive

That phone contact might have a screen (recording) associated with it. That length of “time” for that recording might be two minutes. These are all elements we can use to help describe what that contact is.

Great just what I needed. Thanks.

Thanks, any time.

Recap: What is Metadata

You see, at its core metadata is just additional information (data) about an object. That object can be either physical or digital, but this metadata gives us more ways to understand and use the object.