* The heart of the book provides the complete set of models that will support most of an organization's core business functions, including universal meta models for enterprise-wide systems, business meta data and data stewardship, portfolio management, business rules, and XML, messaging, and transactions
* Developers can directly adapt these models to their own businesses, saving countless hours of development time
* Building effective meta data repositories is complicated and time-consuming, and few IT departments have the necessary expertise to do it right-which is why this book is sure to find a ready audience
* Begins with a quick overview of the Meta Data Repository Environment and the business uses of meta data, then goes on to describe the technical architecture followed by the detailed models

DAVID MARCO is the world's foremost authority on meta data. He is the founder and President of Enterprise Warehousing Solutions, Inc., a GSA schedule and Chicago-headquartered stra-tegic partner and systems integrator. Marco is also the author of Building and Managing the Meta Data Repository (Wiley).

MICHAEL JENNINGS is an enterprise architect and global data warehousing strategist in the human resources outsourcing technology architecture practice at Hewitt Associates. He is a monthly columnist for DM Review Magazine and a frequent speaker on business intelligence issues at major data warehousing conferences.