What is it about?
Databases can store and query values annotated with different kinds of metadata, such as time, security, privacy, provenance, and quality. Yet when these values are pulled from a database into a programming language through a database API or web service, the metadata is discarded since programming languages are designed to process values without metadata. This paper describes the problem, which we call "The Metadata Impedance Mismatch" and we describe design goals for a new paradigm for programming languages to support the processing of data annotated with different kinds of metadata.
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Why is it important?
When applications store data in a database, but discard the metadata in the process of moving the data into a programming language for processing and analysis, the meaning of the data changes potentially violating the original meaning and intended use of the data.
Perspectives
This paper is a bit out of the ordinary in two ways. First it identifies a problem rather than proposes a solution. We recognized that the problem was important and not on the radar of most database researchers. Second, it crosses research boundaries from databases to programming languages, so is at the frontier of both research communities.
Curtis Dyreson
Utah State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Metadata Impedance Mismatch between Databases and Programming Languages, November 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3746252.3760947.
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