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.