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| Frequently Asked Questions on Metadata |
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| Metadata purpose: |
| Q1: What is metadata? |
| A1: Metadata is the descriptive data necessary to allow us to find, process and use data, information and products. While metadata generally can describe products, services and software as well as data at different stages of manipulation, it can also be a specification. Metadata can be extensive and all-inclusive, or it can be specific to a more limited function. Metadata are used to provide documentation for data sets or services. In essence, metadata answers who, what, when, where, why, and how about every data that are being documented. |
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| Q2: Why should I create metadata? |
| A2: Metadata helps to distribute information about the data produced by you or your organization. User can know description of your dataset or service. Metadata that conform to the WMO Metadata profile will correspond to the user application. |
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| Q3: Who should create metadata? |
| A3: Data managers who are either technically-literate scientists or scientifically-literate computer specialists. Creating correct metadata is like library cataloguing, except the creator needs to know more of the scientific information behind the data in order to properly document them. Ensure that there is good communication between the metadata producer and the data producer. |
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| Metadata standards: |
| Q4: Can I make new metadata elements? |
| A4: Certainly. This Profile provide standard metadata and an associated structure that will serve a wide variety of digital geographic data and non geographic data. The definitions and domain values are intended to be sufficiently generic to satisfy the metadata needs of various disciplines. However, the very diversity of data means that generic metadata may not accommodate all applications. Prior to the creation of extended metadata a careful review of the existing metadata within this WMO Core Metadata Profile must be performed to confirm that suitable metadata does not already exist. For each extended metadata section, entity, and/or element, the name, short name, definition, obligation, condition, maximum occurrence, data type, and domain values shall be defined. |
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| Q5: How do I create metadata? |
| A5: First you have to understand both the data you are trying to describe and the standard itself. Then you need to decide about how you will encode the information. Normally, you will create a single XML file for each metadata record, that is, one XML document describes one data set. You then use some tool to enter information into XML document. |
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| Q6: What tools are available to create metadata? |
| A6: Today you can create metadata using a text editor or Special XML editor like XML Spy. |
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| Q7: What tools are available to check the structure of metadata? |
| A7: No, it is not implemented yet. |
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| Metadata file formats: |
| Q8: What is the file format for metadata? |
| A8: Metadata information should be available in a standard format, e.g. XML. |
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| Q9: Data representation formats |
| While the WMO code formats will be used for real-time exchange of operation-critical data, the user will be able to select from a wide variety of optional data representation formats. |
