Commonly used metadata

Items, or objects, stored in the Macrobond database are called entities. The most fundamental type of entity is the Time series, while some other types are Region, Release, Source, Index, and Security. All entities have unique names/identifiers.

All entities have metadata fields that describe them. These pieces of information come as a set of metadata attributes.

There are different types of attributes. Some can take its values only from a list of pre-defined values, while others allow more flexibility. Attributes come in different data types such as string, timestamp, boolean and integer. Entities can also function as meta data for other entities and in such cases act as regular attributes. An example of this is the Region attribute/entity.

Given the name of an attribute, you can use the Macrobond API to get more details.

Some metadata attributes are used just for descriptive purposes, to form series titles and to organize them, and these are prone to change as the organization of the database is changed.

Other metadata is used to describe properties of an entity. The below table lists the most common and useful metadata attributes, divided into the entities they refer to:

Time series

Main attributes

Specific attributes

Attributes related to specific sources

Other attributes

Release

Source

Region

Regions are geographical or economical regions for which there are time series and other entities in the database. A list of the most common regions can be found
here.

Security

Company

For more metadata see our complete list under: List of attributes.