With the flood of data that organizations are experiencing, metadata management is no longer optional – it has become a necessity. The concept of metadata management is fairly new because older metadata services, before this rush of data, had no significant problems locating data files. Now they do.
Metadata, at its most basic, can be described as small amounts of data used to identify larger data packages. Metadata is an abbreviated description that allows search engines to find the requested information. Its primary purpose is to help find and retrieve data.