Overview
When transforming data into CDISC Standards or internal proprietary standards, it is important to manage the metadata.  This contains information such as dataset and variable attributes.  The metadata of the transformed data can be captured and stored centrally in a metadata database.  This can help with managing updates to standards by managing it centrally.  The METADATA utility will help you with this by collecting and updating the metadata of selected datasets in a centralized database.

METADATA Options
The METADATA screen allows you to select the data which to be included in the metadata database.  The data flow for this tool is shown here.

Source Data

CDISC Builder METADATA

Metadata Database and HTML reports

The options available for selecting data and options for METADATA are:

• Source Data - This is the location of the dataset that is going to be used to update the metadata database.
• Datasets - Source datasets that are used to populate the metadata database.
• Preview - A preview of the first 100 observations of the data that is selected.
• Metadata Database - The libname and dataset name where the metadata will be stored. The default dataset name will be METADB.
• Task - This will either update the database with the source data selected or remove the metadata from the database.
• Search - This provides the option to search through the entire metadata database for any information in the metadata.
• Output - The location and file of the HTML report that is generated documenting the metadata database.
• Save Code - The code saved in this location will contain a macro call capturing all the options that has been selected.  This can therefore be executed independent from this interface as a SAS program.

Deleting will not delete the actual data but it will only remove the metadata from the database. The METADATA can be applied to many datasets within the specified source location data path at one time.