> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.pentaho.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.pentaho.com/pdia-data-integration/10.2-data-integration/advanced-topics-pentaho-data-integration-overview/copybook-steps-in-pdi-cp/metadata-discovery.md).

# Metadata discovery

You can use metadata discovery automate the tedious process of manually identifying and determining metadata from Cobol Copybook and JDBC databases.

* [**Read metadata from Copybook**](/pdia-data-integration/10.2-data-integration/pdi-transformation-steps-reference-overview/read-metadata-from-copybook.md)

  The Read metadata from Copybook step reads a binary fixed-length copybook definition file and outputs the file and column descriptor information as fields to Pentaho Data Integration rows.
* [**Query metadata from a database**](/pdia-data-integration/10.2-data-integration/pdi-transformation-steps-reference-overview/query-metadata-from-a-database-article.md)

  The Query metadata from a database step discovers metadata from six different JDBC metadata types to use with [ETL Metadata Injection](/pdia-data-integration/10.2-data-integration/pdi-transformation-steps-reference-overview/etl-metadata-injection.md) in PDI.


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