Meta-Data Version and Configuration Management in Multi-Vendor Environments John R. Friedrich   View Paper (PDF)   Return to Metadata Management for Data Integration (Industrial) Abstract Nearly all components that comprise modern information technology, such as Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) environments, Extract/Transform/Load (ETL) engines, Warehouses, EII, and Business Intelligence (BI), contain a great deal of meta-data, which often drive much of the tool's functionality. These metadata are distributed and duplicated, are often times actively interacting with the tools as they process data, and are generally represented in a variety of methodologies. Meta-data exchange and reuse is now becoming commonplace. This article is based upon the real challenges found in these complicated meta-data environments, and identifies the often overlooked distinctions and importance of meta-data version and configuration management (CM), including the extensive use of automated meta-data comparison, mapping comparison, mapping generation and mapping update functions, which comprise a complete meta-data CM environment. Also addressed is the reality that most repositories are not up to the task of true version and configuration management, and thus true impact and lineage analysis, as their emphasis has been on the development a single enterprise architecture and the concept of "a single version of the truth." ©2006 Association for Computing Machinery