You are here: The SDK Classes > The Metadata Class

## The Metadata Class

The Metadata class is a container for storing metadata about the point cloud. It is a key-value pair container that you can use to store strings, arrays of floating point values and raw binary data (BLOBs).

Each key-value pair has the following properties:

- key name
- description (optional)
- data type (string, reals, or BLOB,stored as a MetadataDataType enum)
- values and length

For a table of code examples included the SDK, see "Code Examples").

###### Known Metadata Key Names

The MrSID Decode SDK recognizes six fixed metadata key names and one key pattern, but will accept any name. The seven recognized names are listed in the following table.

Metadata Key Names
Name | Data Type | Description
--- | --- | ---
FileSourceID | string | Identifies the source of the data.
ProjectID | string | Identifies the project that the data was acquired for.
SystemID | string | Identifies the hardware system or the method by which the file was made.
GeneratingSoftware | string | The software that created the file.
FileCreationDate | string | Date the file was created in the form yyyy-mm-dd
PointRecordsByReturnCount | array of reals | Contains an array of point counts per return
PreCompressionPointCount | array of reals of length 1 | Used to store the number of points that were in the input file before it was compressed/decimated.
LAS_BoundingBox | array of reals of length 6 | Stores the bounding box of the original LAS file if the source was a LAS file.
<LAS VLR User ID>::<Record ID> | BLOB | The method we use to store unrecognized variable length records (VLRs) from LAS files.