Business Metadata Delivery

This chapter presents various approaches to delivering business metadata directly to businesspeople in order to enhance their normal work activity and help them perform their jobs better and more efficiently. The main point is to understand the users' needs, identify the type of metadata they feel will be helpful, and then devise a mechanism that interrupts their normal workflow very minimally or not at all. There are certain guiding principles that help create delivery channels. Assurance that the data has a use and can be accessed by the right audience is important. Moreover, the usage mechanism has to be easy for people. The appropriate business metadata delivery mechanism is highly dependent on use case scenarios. This chapter also provides answers to questions such as: Who needs a particular set of metadata, under what conditions are they likely to use it, and what is the best way for them to access it, given the business scenario? When do people need the clarity that business metadata can provide?