Metadata redefinition 2: how?

By Andrew Clifford

Metadata redefinition is the basis for Metrici's versatility, productivity and simplicity. How does it work?

Metadata is data about data. Within Metrici, everything is a node, and the data and behaviour of a node is fully described in its node type and member types. Node types and member types are therefore the metadata within Metrici.

But it doesn't stop there. Node types and member types are themselves nodes. They are defined using other node types, which we call node type types and member type types, which are also nodes. You can think of node type types and member type types as the tools that you use within Metrici. Metadata redefinition involves creating node type types and member type types, or new tools, to make the development of solutions as simple as possible.

This approach streamlines simple requirements and makes it easier to build complicated solutions.

As an example of streamlining the simple, creating questions for questionnaires is simplified by using the Question member type type rather than the standard member type type. It uses more familiar terms like "text", "number" and "repeat", rather than "value", "scale" and "cardinality", and makes it easy to pick different formats without having to know about display properties.

To give a more complicated example, file handling member type types create components to manage the upload and display of images.

You can use the file handling member type types to create gallery components

Internally, these are complicated: you need to control where images are stored, you may need to downsize images and generate previews, and you may need to link the images to other nodes. The member type types encapsulate the processing and present it in more familiar terms. And because it is all just data, it is easy to use these tools to create the specific file handling components that your solution needs.

A handful of techniques are used to define and redefine metadata in Metrici. Derivation converts tool parameters into the underlying standard metadata or API calls. Member type types can use templates to specify prototypes that acts as a basis for member types. Extension scripts create additional content within the user interface.

What metadata redefinition delivers may seem similar to the features of other platforms, but there are two key differences that make it more versatile and simpler:

• Metadata redefinition allows new tools to be created within the platform itself. The Metrici libraries provide a large number of types and tools that meet the needs of most solutions, but if your solution could benefit from a new sort of tool, you can extend the standard set of tools to provide the ideal environment for creating your solution.
• Everything is data based. Small amounts of scripting are used to control processing, but these scripts are just part of the data, and types and tools can be used just as data without further programming.

What I really like about metadata redefinition is that it removes constraint. Metrici has a very versatile data model, but if we used any other approach, the versatility of the data would be compromised. As it is, we are only scratching the surface of what it can do.

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