Metadat Usage

coma

Hi,
Forgive me if its a newbie question, But how exactly is the metadata used outside of the Content Management server. For example if i am copying the data using opendeploy to a production server. How do i make use of the metadata on HTML files, especially the launch and expiry date. Of course i can send the metadata to DB using DAS, and build the intelligence into my presentation part to read info from the DB, but is there an easier way??
TIA
Regards
Coma