Effective metadata governance plays a pivotal role in ensuring FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) data management. For scientific organizations, metadata is not just a compliance requirement—it’s an enabler for data discoverability, traceability, and operational efficiency. With the most recent Tetra Data Platform release, we’ve made significant additional strides toward improving metadata governance by introducing two key enhancements: file attribute history and a new attribute management page. These updates aim to provide comprehensive traceability for label changes and enable centralized label management, driving value across compliance, troubleshooting, and operational workflows for TetraScience customers.
This blog post will explore these enhancements, the challenges they address, and how they help empower TetraScience customers.
The Challenge: Traceability and Centralization
Modern scientific data management demands robust metadata governance to support both regulatory requirements and operational needs. Two key challenges emerged from customer feedback:
1. Traceability and compliance
- Users needed a way to track label changes for files, answering critical questions like: "Who made this change, when, and why?"
- Regulatory audits often require complete provenance of metadata changes for compliance validation.
2. Centralized label management
- Users sought a centralized list of all labels and the ability to initiate important workflows, such as:
- Filtering all files for a certain label name or label value name
- Understanding who created or modified a certain label and when
- Disabling outdated, duplicated, or erroneous labels
All these are important operational workflows to create and maintain a clean list of labels, which further enhances data discoverability since these labels are used to search for data.
These challenges underscored the need for a system that can ensure traceability and provide a unified view of labels to streamline operations.
Solution Highlights
1. File attribute history for labels
To access the new file attribute history, simply navigate to the “File Details” page of any file and select the new “File Attribute History” tab.
Note: Although metadata and tags currently applied to files can be viewed under the “Advanced” option, their cumulative change history across versions is not available. This is because metadata and tags are being deprecated in favor of labels, which are now the standard for file attributes. Unlike labels, any change in metadata and tags will result in the automatic creation of new file versions.
The file attribute history feature introduces a complete provenance trail for label changes on a file. Customers can view a detailed history of all actions for labels (added, updated, removed), offering full transparency. Key benefits include:
- Enhanced traceability
- Track label changes with details including:
- Timestamp
- Method (e.g., API, UI, bulk updates)
- Actor responsible for the change (e.g., user, agent, or pipeline)
- View a log of all label actions—additions, updates, or deletions— with both the original and updated values displayed.
- Track label changes with details including:
- Troubleshooting made easy
- Pinpoint errors by accessing a detailed history of label changes, ensuring quick identification and rectification of issues.
Example of file attribute history
2. Centralized attribute management
To access the new attribute management features, simply click on “Attribute Management” on the left side of the main navigation panel.
The new attribute management page provides a single interface to manage all labels, metadata, and tags across the organization. Key benefits include:
- Comprehensive overview: View metadata for all labels, including:
- Number of files associated with the label
- Number of values associated with the label
- Created/modified by and date
- Active/disabled status of each label
- Bulk operations: Admins can filter files by a specific label name or a specific label name/value pair in “Search” to perform bulk updates to labels across files, simplifying large-scale metadata changes.
- Standardization: Streamline label normalization by disabling inconsistent or duplicate labels.
Example use case
Customer Benefits
Faster troubleshooting
By providing a granular history of label changes, the new file attribute history feature empowers users to quickly trace the root cause of label inconsistencies or errors, reducing operational bottlenecks.
Improved metadata quality
The centralized attribute management page fosters metadata consistency by giving admins control over labels and supporting standardization efforts. This enhances data quality and discoverability, aligning with FAIR principles.
Operational efficiency
Bulk operations and comprehensive metadata insights save time for data admins, enabling them to focus on higher-value activities instead of manual metadata management tasks.
Conclusion
TetraScience redefines metadata governance with its robust file attribute history and centralized attribute management features. These capabilities address critical compliance and operational challenges and pave the way for better data management practices. By leveraging these enhancements, customers can ensure their data remains accurate, traceable, and compliant with regulatory requirements, setting a strong foundation for scientific innovation.
For more information, see File Attribute History and Manage and Apply Attributes in the TetraScience documentation.