Metadata is the information or data in Data Warehouse that is not exactly the data itself but its data about the data. In a broader way you can view Metadata as an encyclopedia of the data warehouse. Metadata in Data Warehouse contains information about the various Database Objects used in Data Warehouse, Systems Tables, Catalog Information, Indexes, Views, Database level security levels, roles and grants.
Metadata can also contain information about ETL transformations that load data from Data Staging area to Data Warehouse. It can also contain aggregate table definition.
However, in a hurry of developing Data Warehouse, Metadata is often undervalued. In order to get good control over Data warehouse development and future maintenance it’s a good practice to create a repository to store Metadata and update it on regular basis to keep it up-to-date.
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