Glossary

Curation Metadata – descriptive elements detailing how the related data are stored or accessed.
Data Producer – an entity that acquires or generates primary data.
Data Provider – an entity that makes data available in some format through an electronic interface.
Derived Metadata – metadata extracted from Primary Data through subsequent analysis or processing, e.g. the SFC and SEC
Metadata – any Data that provides information about Data (including other metadata).
Primary Data – archived information that represents the baseline storage of an observation or measurement. These are the data in their “rawest” form, which may be raw photon counts, or more often “data numbers” which is the result of converting the incoming flux to a digital representation.
Secondary Data – any subsequent representation of the data that is the result of processing (summarizing, modifying, transforming, etc.) Primary Data. A datum may still be considered as Secondary Data even if the corresponding Primary Data is not associated with the system.