ISO/IEC 11179 specifies the kind and quality of metadata necessary
to describe data, and it specifies the
management and administration of that metadata in a metadata registry
(MDR). It applies to the formulation
of data representations, concepts, meanings, and relationships between
them to be shared among people and
machines, independent of the organization that produces the data. It
does not apply to the physical
representation of data as bits and bytes at the machine level.
In ISO/IEC 11179, metadata refers to descriptions of data. ISO/IEC
11179 does not contain a general
treatment of metadata. This part of ISO/IEC 11179 provides the means
for understanding and associating the
individual parts and is the foundation for a conceptual understanding
of metadata and metadata registries.