Heterogeneous Metadata Management and Manipulation using an XML based Framework

Abstract

Heterogeneous metadata is used in different application systems of digital libraries, online shops, or enterprises. The schema of metadata may change frequently; therefore, issues about metadata management and manipulation may arise. Traditionally, administrators have to update the RDBMS database schema and the application programs while the schema of metadata changes. In this paper, XML-based Metadata Management and Manipulation Framework (XMF for short) is proposed to facilitate these tasks. In XMF, metadata of objects, the information about their relationships, and the keyword information are stored in XMLformat. By using XMF, administrators can perform retrieve and maintain metadata, keyword and relationship search, and handle the changes of the schema of metadata easily. To certify the feasibility of XMF, an application system based on XMF is shown.