Describes data rather than being the data itself, for instance how a file is laid out or what rows each chunk contains, so tools can read things efficiently.
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Metadata in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- CONTAINS
Searches columns with a full-text index for words, phrases, prefixes, inflected forms or synonyms; you use it as a predicate in
WHERE. - CRUD
Shorthand for create, read, update and delete, the four basic things you do with data. Data-plane roles in Azure Cosmos DB, for instance, authorise those operations on items.
Related terms
- Advanced data parsing
Structure-aware document processing: it applies OCR to scanned pages, joins tables spanning pages, recovers headers and produces chunks tagged with heading, page and table metadata, in contrast to fixed-size or page-by-page chunking.
- AI-generated comments
Drafted descriptions for Unity Catalog objects and their columns, which Catalog Explorer produces by reading metadata. Someone should check each one before accepting it, and it is not a dependable way of spotting PII.
- ALM Toolkit
An open-source, no-cost utility for comparing Power BI semantic model schemas. Because it can release just the metadata changes you pick through the XMLA endpoint, a model that's already published keeps both its data and its incremental refresh partitions.
- Azure Instance Metadata Service
Endpoint at the non-routable address 169.254.169.254, reachable only from within a VM, that returns metadata about the VM and issues managed identity tokens. An outbound NSG rule denying the AzurePlatformIMDS tag cuts off access.
- AzurePlatformIMDS (service tag)
Service tag for the Instance Metadata Service at 169.254.169.254, meaningful only outbound. Denying it in an outbound NSG rule stops the VM reaching IMDS; inbound rules using it do nothing.
- BROWSE
Granted on a catalog, this Unity Catalog privilege lets people discover objects, read their metadata and request access, all without
USE CATALOGand with no access to the data itself. - CLONE
Copies a table as of a given version through
CREATE TABLE ... CLONE. Deep is the default and duplicates data plus metadata; shallow copies the metadata alone and keeps referencing the original files. - Column encryption key
In Always Encrypted, the key that actually encrypts column values; it sits encrypted in the database metadata and the driver retrieves it, so clients never receive it directly.