Reference Metadata
Contents
Overview
Reference Metadata is a structured document of information which can be attached to any SDMX structure. Reference Metadata should be thought of as metadata to help the user understand more about the data. The information in a Reference Metadata report is textual, it is structured under headings/sub headings, and can be a mixture of data types including html, numbers, coded values, boolean, urls, and more.
Reference Metadata can be used for any purpose, it can be used to document more information about a Concept or a Code, or a mapping. Common use cases for Reference Metadata are to capture data quality metadata including aspects such as how the data was collected, legal information, contract information, and so on. The IMF Data Quality Framework provides a good example of this type of metadata, with their Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) demonstrating the use of Data Quality Metadata in a collection and dissemination space.
Designing a Metadata Report Template
Metadata Structure Definition
In the same way that SDMX defines the shape and content of your Datasets, in terms of the Dimensions and Attributes, there is a same definition for Reference Metadata. The Metadata Structure Definition is the structure used to define the allowable content of a Metadata Report, a good analogy is a user creating a Word document and filling in all the Headings and Sub Headings in the document, but not completing the body of the document. What they have created is a template which they can distribute to their users to fill in the details.
The Metadata Structure Definition defines a list of Concepts (the analogy is a document heading) the Concepts can be made into a hierarchy (headings and sub headings), Concepts are given allowable representation (is the authored content under the heading HTML, Integer, Coded, does it have a maximum length, etc.) The allowable representation can even be set to ‘none’ to indicate the heading is just a presentational heading to group a set of sub headings. For example the Concept of Contact may be set to be presentational, with the sub Concepts of Name, Phone Number, and Department as sub headings which do take content. The corresponding Metadata Report would look like this:
Contact Name : Matthew Nelson Phone Number : 01234 444555 Department : IT
