综合省情地理信息系统的建立与运行需要元数据的支持，在分别对现有元数据标准和综合省情地理信息系统特点进行分析的基础上，指出了使用元数据的优点，提出了综合省情地理信息空间数据元数据的内容，以提高系统查询检索的速度和系统分析效率为主要目的，对元数据的存储采用了一种以数据库为基础的新的存储模式，以关系表格来管理元数据，建立元数据库。元数据库的管理以图形数据的管理为基础，二者必须协调进行。

Metadata is a kind of data coming from some data collection,and it is a description or direction of the data collection.The advantages to utilize the metadata are as follows:(1)the speed of selecting and indexing from large volume of data in the geo spatial database can be improved;(2)it will promote the sharing of geo spatial information and propel the progress of Chinese standard;(3)it will be advantageous to evaluate the geo spatial data and control their quality;and(4)taking advantage of the metadata may be helpful to store and manage the geo spatial information.The General Provincial Situation GIS(GPSGIS)is a kind of GIS reflecting the comprehensive and general situation in some province,and the content contains:(1)the general geographic information(such as rivers,lakes,topology and so on);(2)natural resources information;(3)economic information;(4)social development information;and(5)others.So,the development and application of GPSGIS should be supported by metadata for geo spatial data.On the basis of analyzing of the present standards for metadata,the contents of metadata in GPSGIS are put forward.The metadata is stored by a new method that is based on the relation database.Certainly the metadata is organized and managed by related tables to build the metadata database.The database is composed of some metadata tables as given belaw:(1)the top metadata table,located in the most top level of the all geo spatial databases;(2)the sub top metadata table,located in the lower level than the top one,so it is less important than the top metadata;and(3)the data collection metadata tables,located in the equal rank to the one geo spatial database.It is of importance that the management of the metadata databases is based on the management of the topologic data,but both of them must be coordinated.