Chapter 4. CMIS metadata: types and properties
This chapter covers
- General metadata concepts
- CMIS types and property definitions
- Constraints on property definitions
- Type discovery using Chemistry
- Type mutability (CMIS 1.1)
- Secondary types (CMIS 1.1)
Up to this point, we’ve been working in the realm of data. This chapter will bring us up a level into a discussion of metadata. We’ll start with a brief explanation of what exactly metadata is and how it relates to data in general. Then we’ll cover all of the basic types of CMIS metadata, including how they’re categorized and discovered. Along the way, we’ll go through some exercises that show all of these concepts in action. By the end of this chapter, you’ll have a good understanding of CMIS metadata and the new metadata-related features that are coming in CMIS 1.1.
Simply put, metadata is data about data. Perhaps a slightly more helpful definition in this case would be data about the containers of data. If that makes no sense to you, don’t worry. It’ll all be clear in time. If you have a good grasp of metadata already and want to get right to CMIS metadata, you can jump ahead to section 4.2.