[discussion]: Use the word `metadata` or `data dictionary` about REDCap metadata?

[signekb]

I'm a bit confused. What is metadata in this case? The dictionary?

_Originally posted by @lwjohnst86

Yes: we will be downloading multiple dictionaries from REDCap that all contain metadata (about events, repeating instruments, fields). So I'm calling what REDCap calls "data dictionary" "field metadata" here because it contains metadata about the form fields.

Originally posted by @martonvago in #153 (comment)

What is the reason to switch to using "field metadata" when we were using "data dictionary" before?

Originally posted by @lwjohnst86 in #153 (comment)

Do you mean more than the above?
That is: initially we thought we would only need to make one metadata request to REDCap. This was for the "data dictionary" that contains metadata about the form fields. "data dictionary" is (one of) REDCap's term for this metadata, so we used it as well. Later (while looking into primary keys), we found out that this is not enough and that, in fact, we need 3 pieces of metadata: about fields, events, and repeating instruments. So now that we are building things up from square one, I thought it would be better to name these 3 kinds of metadata consistently and descriptively.

(I also think that calling the metadata "dictionary" is quite vague because in Python many things are dictionaries. Plus, the data dict is actually a list of dictionaries.)

Originally posted by @martonvago in #153 (comment)