vardata

Vardata is a term used in data management and software development to refer to metadata that describes variables in a dataset or in a program. It encompasses information about each variable's identity, type, constraints, and context, rather than the data values themselves. By organizing variable attributes in a vardata store, organizations can improve data governance, understanding, and reproducibility across projects and teams.

In practice, vardata typically appears as a data dictionary or a variable metadata file. A vardata record commonly includes fields such as variableName, dataType, length or precision, units, description, allowedValues or valueDomain, missingValueCodes, and provenance information like source or collection method. Additional attributes may cover scale, accuracy, currency, timestamp of last update, and the variable's role in analyses or models. The exact schema varies by organization, but the guiding idea is to provide a consistent, machine- and human-readable description of each variable.

Vardata supports several activities in data processing and analytics. It underpins data catalogs and metadata management, informs validation rules and data cleaning, guides feature engineering, and helps ensure consistent interpretation across datasets and teams. It also aids auditing, lineage tracking, and compliance with data governance policies.

An example vardata entry might describe a variable named 'age' with type integer, units years, description 'age of participant at time of sampling,' with range 0-120 and missingValueCode -1.

See also data dictionary, metadata, data governance, data catalog.