topic Strategies for Making Field/Attribute Metadata Available to Users While Using ISO 19115-3 Metadata Standard in Metadata, Catalogs, and Search Questions

Strategies for Making Field/Attribute Metadata Available to Users While Using ISO 19115-3 Metadata Standard

KevinBoes2 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:15:58 GMT

I work for a state agency with requirements that metadata be written to conform to ISO 191** group style standards, and I am beginning to work through the metadata for our existing datasets to ensure that they conform to the ISO 19115-3 standard. As I have been looking at the xml files downloaded when viewers obtain metadata from our portal items, I've noticed that the fields information that was included in FGDC style metadata documents is not included in ISO style documents. After my colleagues and I did some digging, we learned that the fields information in ISO standards is meant to be communicated in an attached ISO 19110 feature catalogue, though apparently metadata creation software developers have been slow to implement this in their products. We found these two Esri Community posts from 2023 and 2024 indicating that Esri is planning to embed the ISO 19110 feature catalogue elements within the ISO 19115-3 document in near-term updates to ArcGIS Pro and/or ArcGIS Online, though it's been a few years since those posts, and we're not sure whether that timeline has changed since then.

If anyone knows whether there have been more recent developments in the timeline for ISO 19110 metadata to be embedded within ISO 19115-3 metadata in ArcGIS Online, Enterprise Portal, and Pro, we would really appreciate some more current information. We'd also be interested to hear what strategies people are using to make the fields information currently housed in feature catalogues available to their users in the interim before Esri has made their updates to ISO 19115-3 xml generation.

Re: Strategies for Making Field/Attribute Metadata Available to Users While Using ISO 19115-3 Metadata Standard

DanPatterson — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 23:21:53 GMT

backgrounder for ArcGIS Pro

Create ISO 19115-1 and ISO 19115-3 metadata—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

Re: Strategies for Making Field/Attribute Metadata Available to Users While Using ISO 19115-3 Metadata Standard

JordanDuft — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 18:47:12 GMT

Hi @KevinBoes2 !

Supporting ISO 19115-3 (19110) is still on the roadmap.

Please don’t let this prevent you from documenting attribute field metadata today. Attribute field metadata is stored in ArcGIS Metadata XML, Esri’s internal metadata format, so your work is preserved. When the ISO 19115‑3 (with ISO 19110) metadata style becomes available and is applied, this existing attribute field metadata will appear in both the XML and HTML views.

If you’re documenting metadata in ArcGIS Pro, a recommended approach:

Populate the field alias in the table schema
Synchronize metadata
Complete remaining description attribute field metadata (e.g. field descriptions) in the metadata editor

If you’re documenting metadata in ArcGIS Online or Enterprise, a recommended approach:

Use the Item Details assistant (beta) to quickly create or enhance attribute‑level metadata
Then use Synchronize in the metadata editor (ArcGIS Online or Enterprise) to incorporate those updates into your ISO‑style metadata output

Re: Strategies for Making Field/Attribute Metadata Available to Users While Using ISO 19115-3 Metadata Standard

KevinBoes2 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 13:56:19 GMT

Hi @JordanDuft! I'm glad to hear that this is still on Esri's to-do list! I'm also glad to hear that the ArcGIS Metadata Format is storing field metadata even if it doesn't appear in the output ISO 19115-3 XML file.

One thing we've been noticing within our ArcGIS Enterprise metadata editor is that attribute metadata populated for a feature service is not immediately visible when we open the metadata editor. However, if we add a section to the data dictionary, the existing metadata then becomes visible. Our ArcGIS Enterprise is running version 11.3. Is this a bug that has already been identified and fixed in subsequent versions of ArcGIS Enterprise?