To simplify application development and to achieve enterprise-wide information integration, companies need to describe and share, in a common way, the data in their disparate data sources. These descriptions should include the business description associated with the information asset, as well as location, connection details, data type details, and the informations relationship with other resources.

Sharing these descriptions leads to an increased visibility of information across an enterprise, shortened development times by applying knowledge gleaned from metadata in the application development environment, and reduced operational costs as the organization can discover and eliminate redundant information sources.