In September 2002 I received my degree of Master of Science at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV), a joint department between the University of Stockholm and the Royal Institute of Technology. I wrote my Masters Thesis commissioned by The Swedish National Tax Board during the spring and presented the thesis at a seminar in September.

Abstract
In order for a well functioning data warehouse to succeed many components must work together. Metadata, usually called data about data, is an important part. A more detailed description is that metadata is a documentation, description and explanation about the contents of the data warehouse. Metadata is supposed to be a helping hand to all co-workers in an organization that work directly or indirectly with the data warehouse.

Information systems are becoming more and more complex and with rapid technical development it means that metadata and good management of it is more important than ever. Increasingly more data is collected and stored in today's data warehouses, but maybe the most important factor is that nowadays many more people are involved in a project and, in order for them to work efficiently, metadata is required.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how organisations manage metadata. To answer that question a qualitative survey has been carried out. Four organisations from different branches have been interviewed.

The author's conclusion is that organisations are aware of the importance of managing metadata. A challenge that many organisations are up against is how to get the end user more interested and therefore more involved. There are increasingly harder demands from company management for technical documentation so that they do not become vulnerable in case of staff defection or illness. However, as certain knowledge is difficult to document part of it may be known only by one person in some of the investigated organisations.