A metadata engine collects, stores and analyzes information about data and metadata (data about data) in use within a knowledge domain.[1] It virtualizes the view of data for an application by separating the data (physical) path from the metadata (logical) path so that data management can be performed independently of, where the data physically resides. This expands the domain beyond a single storage device to span all devices within its namespace.
The main use of a metadata engine is to enable flexible IT infrastructure or environments, by making applications more storage aware and conversely, a storage device application or data aware.
- ^ Kendall, Aaron. "Metadata-Driven Design: Designing a Flexible Engine for API Data Retrieval". InfoQ. Retrieved 25 April 2017.