Week # 4 Databases, MetaData and Dublin Core

Database and Metadata by example:
Defining a data bases one could say is like selecting a container to hold a harvest of different kinds of beans. Each bean is some bit of information. However, unsorted one could spend a day finding the all the beans for a pot of limas or pintos. Therefore, beans need to be sorted into subcontainers. These subcontainers are called records. The information stored within each record is the raw data that one can manipulate, modify, retrieve or delete.
Most everyone knows how to use an index. Indexes indication the location of records containing desired information. That said, an index is Metadata, information about the infromation stored. A database is manipulated via a question or query. Queries are nothing more than search tools in the form of a set of search parameters.

According to the Wikipedia article for this week, the first electronic filing systems were operated with punch cards. My Dad worked for IBM (Owego, N.Y.) and I recall his having to get up at odd hours and drive to work because some staff member ran a "bad batch". The cards were hole-punched and run in sequence. To get a bad batch all one had to do was invert one of the cards from the correct order, or punch the wrong coding on the card. Finding and Fixing errors often took hours.

The Database Management System and the use of ad-hoc-query method solved the problem of information access and retreivel(Rob and Coronel, 2005). Three main types of databases are currently in use today: the private computer user, business networks and Governmental/University mainframe servers. Some databases are said to centralized when housed on site while other are considered distributed when housed at several different locations.

Dublin Core Data Model:

To put this simply, database query languages come in several flavors just like ice cream. You have MS Access, Oricle, SQL server and others. Some incompatibility issues exhist between these applications. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative seeks to discover a language that is platform or application independent. To achieve this goal the focus has been placed on " semantics to represent all resource descriptive requirements", "means for semantically refining such elements in order to say something much more specific", "specify a particular encoding scheme critical to the interpretation of metadata types", and "describe the content of resources" (Wikipedia).

Of equal importance is the establishment of shared values for Metadata semantics.


Reference:
Rob, P. , Coronel, C. (2005) Database Systems Design, Implementation and Management, pg. 3