Recent advances on metadata (Q1584179)

The term metadata is frequently used in many different sciences. In the case of statistics, this term denotes every information concerning the actual statistical data. Metadata have been an active area of research for the last years. National Statistical Offices (NSO) of Greece and Eurostat have allocated a significant amount of resources, targeting the design and implementation of a new generation of statistical software (Eurostat 1997). Their objective is to integrate the current state of the art in active metadata, metadata guided statistical processing, visualization of metadata and other related technologies. This paper aims at summarising some of the latest results of research in the area of metadata. The modelling of metainformation using templates and object oriented models within the context of a metadata database is initially compared to the traditional way of using simple verbal footnotes. The possibility of further automating the procedures inside NSO using metadata guided statistical processing is discussed and certain related aspects of man-machine interfaces are considered. Finally, selected topics concerning the quality of metadata and their integration inside large statistical information systems are examined.