元数据。你想要的软件
The Architecture Files, Episode #9
建筑档案，第9集
Imagine you’re choosing between two burger joints.
想象一下，你要在两个汉堡店之间做出选择。
On your left is McStandard, which always makes their burgers the same way. On your right is Meta King, the burger joint that lets you declaratively customize your burger and have it exactly the way you want it. All things being equal, which would you choose?
在你的左边是McStandard，它总是以同样的方式制作汉堡包。在你的右边是Meta King，这家汉堡店可以让你宣称定制你的汉堡，并且完全按照你想要的方式来做。在同等条件下，你会选择哪个？
I don’t know about you, but I’d choose customization every time. (Especially if those burger joints were thinly veiled analogies for software architecture.) And in the domain of software, customization means that your software’s behavior must be flexible, not hard-coded. It needs to be based on metadata.
我不知道你怎么样，但我每次都会选择定制。(特别是如果那些汉堡店是对软件架构的薄薄的比喻的话）。)而在软件领域，定制化意味着你的软件行为必须是灵活的，而不是硬编码的。它需要以元数据为基础。
In this episode of the Architecture Files, we’re going to talk about the basic approach we take to metadata within the Salesforce architecture, to give you a glimpse into why it’s so important, and how we do it.
在这一集《架构文件》中，我们将讨论我们在Salesforce架构中对元数据采取的基本方法，让你了解为什么元数据如此重要，以及我们是如何做到的。
Metadata can be a bit of a nebulous term, so let’s start by talking about what it really means.
元数据可能是一个有点模糊的术语，所以让我们先谈谈它的真正含义。
Everything a computer works with is data — ones and zeros — from the firmest firmware to the most ephemeral state of a pixel on the screen. By metadata, however, I’m talking specifically about data that describes or constrains the behavior of software. It’s what tells us that this byte is an instruction in the OS, and that byte is one pixel in a catchy song about cheeseburgers.
计算机工作的所有东西都是数据--1和0--从最牢固的固件到屏幕上一个像素的最短暂的状态。然而，通过元数据，我特别谈论的是描述或约束软件行为的数据。它告诉我们，这个字节是操作系统中的一条指令，而这个字节是一首关于芝士汉堡的动听歌曲中的一个像素。
Now, let’s clear something up right away: by “metadata”, I specifically don’t mean just “additional data”, like a timestamp, or a browser fingerprint. It’s certainly not uncommon to hear people use the word that way (“I want to know what metadata t...