Great post by Mike Ferguson called Data Management Needs A Solid Foundation – The World of Metadata over on the Dataflux Blog
I agree with him when he says that he struggled with the definition of Metadata as “data about data”, so I really like his version of:
“When it comes to data, does the user know what it means?”
You may find that over time your SAS Metadata Repository seems to be getting bigger and bigger. The reason for this is that when you deleted an object in the Metadata Repository SAS doesn’t physically delete the object it just marks it ready for deletion.
To remove all the objects that have been flagged for deletion you need to purge the Metadata Repository. According to SAS help Purge:
“permanently removes all metadata items that have been marked for deletion in the selected repository”
You can purge the repository via SAS Management Console:
You must have security rights (authorisation) to pause the server in order to perform this task.
Be careful not to click truncate or format by mistake and of course backup your Metadata Server before performing this task.
Out of interest SAS Help defines formating your Metadata repository as:
“formats the selected repository, which removes all metadata definitions in the repository.”
and truncating as:
“Deletes all of the metadata objects in the selected repository, but does not delete the object containers or remove the repository registration”
hence the warning about ensuring you have backed up and click the correct option.