What is one of the main purposes of metadata management?

One of the main purposes of metadata management is to document and manage data assets effectively. Metadata provides essential information about data, including its origin, format, meaning, structure, and relationships with other data. This documentation is crucial for understanding and leveraging data assets across an organization. It ensures that data can be accurately interpreted and used by different stakeholders, including data analysts, business users, and IT professionals.

Having a well-defined metadata management strategy supports the overall data governance framework, enhances data quality, and promotes compliance with regulations by providing clarity on data lineage and usage. This documentation serves as a critical resource for data discovery, impact analysis, and data stewardship activities, thereby helping organizations make informed decisions based on their data assets.

In contrast, while other options touch on important aspects of data management, they are more specific applications or outcomes that arise from effective metadata management rather than its overarching purpose. Visualizing data flows and ensuring accurate data supply chains are valuable activities that benefit from good metadata, and facilitating data integration is also a critical aspect of data management that relies on well-documented metadata. However, the foundational role of metadata management lies in documenting and managing data assets.