Management of Data about Data is an issue for all of us
Data about Data sounds like a topic that is interesting only for experts. Most of us probably assume that only those experts can understand what it is all about. And indeed the management of Data about Data is for example in the specialized world of Business Data warehouses (referred to there as Meta-Data Management – MDM) one of the most expensive issues to solve.
On the other side we are going to see in a minute that the management of Data about Data is also one of the core issues for everyone who is using today a computer and the internet on a regular basis (so for example all of us who are in one way or the other rich enough to spend time on reading this article). There is no generic fancy marketing term that is used to refer to this issue and therefore we maybe only occasionally realize that what we are continuously trying to address are indeed Meta-Data issues everywhere:
Managing MP3 files in our music libraries:
Album, Artist, Year and so on are all attributes of the song. The song itself is encoded in MP3 and is nothing else then data. Then obviously the Album name etc is just data (”Thriller”) about data (MP3 encoded music). Have you ever tried to find a song that does not have its attributes properly maintained?
Managing our set of digital photos:
Who, When, Where, What: all of this data that is describing the content of the photo (that file itself is again just data) has to be maintained by someone if you are interested in accessing on demand specific photos (assuming that the brute force browsing method of all photos is becoming an unacceptable burden as soon as we have some thousands of pictures collected). Putting in the last minute the set of photos together that you would like to use to print out the PhotoBook for your Mothers 60th birthday can get stress full if you have not invested your time in maintaining the photo Meta-Data correctly, I can tell you that.
Trying to find goods that you would like to buy:
I spent last week more then 25 minutes on the German site of Amazon to find out that the “Kingston USB Memory Stick DataTraveller II+ Migo Edition 2GB” for whatever obscure reason is not maintained as “DataTraveller II+ Migo Edition 2GB” but instead as “Kingston DataTraveller 2GB”. From the perspective of Kingston these would be two different products and my only explanation is that Amazon made a mistake in maintaining the data about this product page (obviously also data). Amazons error in maintaining the Meta-Data for this product page had an real life effect: I lost 25 minutes with searching for it.
Is it worth to find solutions for the Management of Data about Data that are simple enough that they work not only for specialists but also for all of us?
For me the answers is a clear: Yes, yes, yes!
To be continued.
Bookmark Buttons
April 19th, 2007 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Issues explained. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Subscribe via Feed Burner
