Technical metadata
Facts about how data is physically stored and moved: names, types, locations, schemas and jobs.
Also called: physical metadata
Technical metadata describes the data as the machines see it: database, schema, table and column names, data types, keys, file paths, and the jobs that read and write them. It is usually harvested automatically from the systems themselves.
Example: LOAN_DTL.OUTSTANDING_BAL_AMT, DECIMAL(18,2), in schema LND on an Oracle database, loaded nightly by a batch job.
Three scales - Personal: the folder, file name and format of your tax spreadsheet. - Business: the columns in your accounting system's invoice table. - Enterprise: millions of datasets harvested from hundreds of platforms.
Not to be confused with business metadata, which says what the data means.