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What
Is Metadata Modelling?
Meta (n) – after, beyond
According to Wikipedia, metadata is “data about
data”. In terms of Business Intelligence reporting,
metadata describes data in a way that makes it useful
for reporting and analysis.
Metadata modelling is typically
an enhancement to relational database tables. It would
be difficult to use the tables directly because we would
have to filter through numerous items we didn’t
need, join the tables together, create calculations
and so on. Joining several tables together can also
have a serious impact on processing time. Good metadata
modelling deals with all these issues.
In Cognos 8 we use Framework Manager
to model metadata. The model combines items from different
tables and makes them available to the reporting and
analysis tools in user-friendly folders. Data items
can be given user-friendly names and even hidden from
users who are not required to see them. Because the
joins are defined in the metadata the report developer
or the person creating analyses does not have to worry
about including them or getting them right. Data items
can be combined in complex calculations ready for reporting.
In Framework Manager data items
can be automatically aggregated according to the type
of data defined. For example, if an item is defined
as a ‘fact’ totals will be automatically
created when it is used in a report.
Data can also be packaged according
to business function, for example data for financial
reporting in one package, marketing data in another.
This is just a small sample of
the metadata modelling capabilities of Framework Manager.
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