Information Catalog Manager Programming Guide and Reference

What kinds of applications work with the Information Catalog Manager?

You can write two types of applications that use the Information Catalog Manager functions:

• Applications that present data to the user
• Tools that help the administrator perform tasks such as adding and updating metadata--extract programs, for example

Informational applications

You can write applications that work with the Information Catalog Manager in two ways. These applications can:

• Start the application from the Information Catalog Manager

  Figure 1 shows that users can find the object they want, then start a familiar informational application, running under DOS or Microsoft^(R) Windows^(R), that works with the information source identified by this object. The Information Catalog Manager passes the necessary metadata to this application.

  Figure 1. Starting an application from the Information Catalog Manager
  

• Provide the application with metadata

  Users work with familiarinformational applications that run on DOS or Microsoft Windows. These applications can use the Information Catalog Manager functions to locate the information sources that the user wants to work with. Then these applications can retrieve and analyze the actual data located by the Information Catalog Manager, and present the results to the user using its own user interface, as shown in Figure 2.

  Figure 2. Using an application that lets the Information Catalog Manager locate the data
  

Tools that maintain and administer the information catalog metadata

You can write tools for your administrator that:

• Maintain the information catalog metadata
• Add metadata to the information catalog

Maintaining an information catalog

One of the main tasks of a administrator is to update the metadata in the information catalog when the information source itself changes. For example, metadata about a file can include the date of the most recent update; if the file is again updated, the administrator needs to update the corresponding date in the metadata.

You can automate this process by writing programs that update the metadata when the corresponding information source changes.

Adding new objects

When administrators create new information catalogs or add newinformation sources to existing information catalogs, they need to add new object types and objects. The administrator can add metadata by importing files that contain the Information Catalog Manager tag language. This tag language defines the meaning of the metadata being imported into an information catalog.

You can write applications that automatically generate tag language files based on information specified by the administrator. These files can then be imported into one or more information catalog databases to populate the information catalog with metadata.

You can also write applications that extract metadata from existing data sources and format the data as tag language files. These applications are called extract programs, and are described in the Information Catalog Manager Administration Guide.