Milos Metadata is data about data. Hopefully it is structured in a useful way. This means just about everything can be considered to be metadata in some context. In Zope a simple example might be that you want to store large image files outside of Zope's own database, the ZODB. There are several tools to do this. LocalFS and ExtFile Zope Products both allow to store images [or any file ] elsewhere in the server's regular file system. These files are themselves sets of data carefully structured according to thier file type, .jpeg, .png, .pdf etc.. But inside Zope you want to keep simple metadata about those files, such as: path, filename, type, author, width, height, size_Kb, datetime_uploaded, author, etc. You might call these properties or attributes of the source data [object]. Now suppose you want to store some 'higher level' data such as: number of .jpeg files or the name email of the author of the file containing scan of a photograph of the view from his window overlooking the house that jack built in the same street where another man named Milos later asked a question about zope metadata which was then answered in strange way by ... ./Jason ___________________________________________________________ Jason CUNLIFFE = NOMADICS['Interactive Art and Technology'] PS: LocalFS http://www.zope.org/Members/jfarr/Products/LocalFS ExtFile http://www.zope.org/Members/MacGregor/ExtFile The ExtFile/ExtImage Product stores a file externally in the filesystem and keeps only meta data in the Zope Database. The file is stored in an external file repository and is accessible via its corresponding Zope object. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Milos Prudek" <milos.prudek@worldonline.cz> To: <zope@zope.org> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2001 8:46 AM Subject: [Zope] what is metadata?
Hi all,
I see references to "metadata" in Zope Book and this mailing list, but no explanation what this actually means. Could you please give me a few examples of metadata in Zope, and definition of what is metadata?
-- Milos