Metadata falls into three main categories: Understanding the structure, limitations, definition and description of data protects against misinterpretation or misuse and helps ensure database integrity. More precisely, however, metadata describes data containing specific information like type, length, textual description and other characteristics.Ĭonsidering the scope of data to which it applies – from document files, images and videos to spreadsheets and webpages, along with the explosion in data quantity, it’s not surprising that understanding and managing metadata effectively has become an IT business priority. In most information technology usages, the prefix of meta conveys “an underlying definition or description.” So it is that, at its most basic, metadata is data about data.