What exactly is metadata? How is metadata different than regular data?
Metadata is data that describes your data.  For example "Kenneth" is my name.  It would be stored in a column called FirstName (for example).  The metadata would be things like


Variable length string with a max length of 50
First name of the user
Last updated on
Last updated by


Analytics is more


How many Kenneth's are there in the data.
What is the average number of questions by someone with the first name of Kenneth.