A Knowledge Management Scheme for Meta-Data: An Information Structure Graph

For an effective management of data, we need various kinds of meta-data knowledge such as what they mean; how they are created; how they are organized, etc. Some of them are managed as a database schema; others are not. This article proposes a scheme an Information Structure Graph (ISG) to represent these kinds of meta-data that are not managed as a database schema. An Information Structure Graph describes structures that data are created or derived from other data. It is a directed graph, where nodes represent data objects and arcs connect nodes. That is, it is built on a database schema and extends it to include data creation structures. An ISG can be used to answer following questions about data; which data are comparable to each other? If some data includes wrong values, what impacts does it have on other data items? How long does it take to update a data item after something has happened in a real world?