| Inthepast,metadatahasalwaysbeenasecond-classcitizenintheworldofdatabasesanddatawarehouses.Itsmainpurposehasbeentodefinethedata.However,thecurrentemphasisonmetadatainthedatawarehouseandsoftwarerepositorycommunitieshaselevatedittoanewprominence.Theorganizationnowneedsmetadatafortoolintegration,dataintegrationandchangemanagement.Inaddition,withtherecentInternetexpansion,personsallovertheworldcanaccessmoreandmoredocumentdatabases.Extensiblemarkuplanguage(XML)isarecentlyintroducedmeta-languagestandardontheWeb.Itprovidestherulesfordevelopmentofmetadata(markup)standardsforinformationtransferinspecificfields.XMLallowsdevelopmentofmarkuplanguagesthatdescribewhatinformationisratherthanhowitshouldbepresented.Thisallowscomputerapplicationstoprocesstheinformationinintelligentways.Incontrasthypertextmarkuplanguage(HTML),whichfuelledtheinitialgrowthoftheWeb,XMLisametadatastandardconcernedexclusivelywithpresentationofinformation. |