Metadatathat

Metadatathat is a term used in data governance and metadata management to describe a framework for describing metadata about data assets and their use. It treats metadata as a layered construct, with records that describe the origins, quality, transformations, access controls, and relationships of data products. The goal is to improve discoverability, governance, and reproducibility by making metadata more consistent, machine-actionable, and interoperable across systems.

Core components include a metadata catalog, a metadata schema, vocabularies or ontologies, provenance and lineage tracking, data quality indicators, and policy and access control descriptors. In practice metadatathat emphasizes describing both the data itself and the processes that create, modify, or consume it, enabling end-to-end traceability.

Standards and interoperability: it encourages alignment with open standards such as DCAT (Data Catalog Vocabulary), W3C PROV for provenance, and Schema.org for schema descriptions. It supports extensibility through domain-specific ontologies and controlled vocabularies.

Use cases: data discovery and cataloging, impact analysis for data changes, compliance audits, data quality monitoring, and reproducibility of analyses. Organizations implement metadatathat-like layers to document data lineage, data quality rules, stewardship roles, and usage policies.

Status and reception: as of now metadatathat is a conceptual framework used in various pilot projects and academic discussions; no single formal standard bears its name. It is commonly described as a design pattern rather than a protocol, with emphasis on interoperability and automation.

See also: metadata management, data catalog, data lineage, data governance.