Vision
Windows Vista metadata
January 2006
Introduction
Search and organization capabilities are among the primary features of Windows Vista. Windows Vista will improve search functionality on a PC by letting users enrich files with metadata. This decision already received a lot of criticism, Gartner analysts being prominent members of the group of criticasters, but we'll get to that later.
New Features
An example of the new features in Windows Vista which are to be expected is the ability to save search results as virtual folders that are automatically updated to include all items that fit a particular query. All SharePointers out there are very familiair with such a feature, remember the PQS (Persistent Query Service)?
It's also possible to add metadata information to documents, pictures, music and even applications. For SharePoint implementers this should be a very interesting development. Within SPPT solutions information metadata are very valuable assets to have. The metadata enhancements in Windows Vista are certain to have impact on SharePoint technology as well.
Maybe we expect too much from this, but since information metadata is such a valuable asset to any enterprise (as there is no better way to find relevant information then the information itself and accurate metadata), and since it's hard to get users to provide extensive and accurate metadata once, let alone more than once, wouldn't it be great to move a piece of information from system A to system B, e.g. from the file system to SharePoint, or to move it from organization A to organization B and retain all valuable metadata?
Another feature which enhances the searching process are visual cues instead of default document icons. Document icons are no longer a hint of the type of file, but rather a small representation of the file or folder itself. For example, the icon for a Word document is a preview of the first page of the file, and folder icons show a glimpse of what's inside. These types of visual cues aid in the searching process.
Criticism
According to the article 'Watch out with metadata in Vista, analysts warn' ( http://news.com.com/Watch+out+with+metadata+in+Vista%2C+analysts+warn/2100-1012_3-6006290.html?tag=nefd.top ) Microsoft is not paying enough attention to managing metadata which could lead to unwanted and embarrassing information disclosure.
As a sidebar, talking about embarrassing information disclosure, a couple of months ago a member of the Dutch secret service lost a couple of floppy disks containing very sensitive information in his car, because he left them there and sold the car. Anyway, on with the story.
According to Gartner analysts storing metadata in the resources themselves makes it easy to disclose embarrassing information by mistake. If a user uses "good customers" and "bad customers" as keywords on contract files, and the users sends the contract to customers with the keyword still attached it could cause embarrassment or even loss of business.
What makes this even trickier is that programs themselves add metadata as well, automatically. So the user might not even be aware of the presence of that metadata. It would be very risky if sensitive information is added automatically to files. Until proven otherwise, we'll assume that this will not be the case and that all information which is added automatically is harmless.
There will be a way to remove metadata from information, via a simple metadata removal tool provided with Windows Vista by Microsoft, although Gartner analysts state that that's not good enough. They want automatic removal of metadata. At the following link you can find a tool to remove Office 2003/XP metadata: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=144E54ED-D43E-42CA-BC7B-5446D34E5360&displaylang=nl.
So...
On the one hand you'll find the need to be able to search for information effectively, on the other hand the risk of unintentional information disclosure. We do think the preservation of information metadata is very important and we do like the ability to preserve metadata even when information is moved to another system or even moved to another organization. If the Gartner analysts get their way and get automatic removal of metadata those advantages will be gone.
We don't know how the metadata removal tool works, but it should make metadata removal very easy for information which is considered sensitive. For example, as soon as you copy information from the file system to another location the metadata removal tool should spring into life asking you if and what metadata you want to remove. And the same thing should happen when you e-mail a document to somebody. And the same thing should happen when you copy information in and out of SPPT. To sum up, we think metadata management should, by default, be a human choice. But the OS should make sure a human does make that choice. Based on the current metadata removal tool, the next version is probably not gonna be nearly as sophisticated as what we'd like.
In addition, if you're dealing with really sensitive information, wouldn't it be nice to be able to define some kind of digital safe. We imagine it would be possible to add information to the digital safe, and update or delete the information. But it should not be possible for the information or it's metadata to leave the digital safe at all. The content of the digital safe should be manageable by system administrators, but they should not be allowed to view the contents of it. What's in the safe stays in the safe!
Conclusion
We want our metadata! We want to add it once, and we want it to be available everywhere we use the data. So, make it as easy as possible to preserve it, but also make it easy for the user to remove metadata when the user performs any operation which could lead to the disclosure of sensitive information.
Comments?
If you have any comments we'd love to hear it! Drop us a line at info@lcbridge.nl.