Hi:
When you use SAS Data Integration Studio (DI Studio), you are working with either pieces of the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform or with the whole Enterprise BI Server configuration. Since this is a whole client-server configuration that represent configuration tiers (application-tier, data-tier, server-tier, web-tier) and that uses the Metadata server for ALL table, user, library, information map, olap cube, etc definitions, how you retrieve Metadata information will be a specialized topic. You are more likely to find folks who are familiar with "metadata" terminology and concepts in the Web Report Studio forum.
As you have discovered, the workings of the Metadata server and whole BI Platform is not as simple a topic as how to use the LIBNAME engine to point to a SAS dataset or how to write a DATA step program to read a flat file. When we teach our "big picture" classes on how to use the Enterprise Intelligence Platform, we talk about the Metadata, but we don't actually discuss the structure or maintenance of the Metadata. Those topics are reserved for the Platform Administration classes, as described here:
http://support.sas.com/training/us/paths/pa.html and
https://support.sas.com/edu/schedules.html?ctry=us&id=330 (the getting started course)
https://support.sas.com/edu/schedules.html?ctry=us&id=329 (the fast track 5-day course)
A discussion of the Metadata and how to
safely access the Metadata and the Foundation repository programmatically is a topic that is not easily answered in the space limitations of the Community Forum. You might wish to have this discussion with the people who installed and configured the Enterprise Intelligence Platform at your site. Or, you can also open a track with Tech Support for help with specific Metadata query and maintenance tasks.
cynthia