A description of data, that does not include the actual contents of the data. For example, a text file named customer_phone_numbers.txt contains fifty 10-digit phone numbers. An example of the data is any of the phone numbers. Examples of the metadata include: the file name, the file type, the file size in bytes, the times when the file was created and last modified, the number of rows in the file, the number of characters in each row, the type of characters in each row, and the fact that all of the rows have a similar set of characters.