Well, I finally got motivated enough to check the calibre command-line options, and yes it has one for fetching metadata.
The following worked quite well for me, in a BAT file.
Quote:
"C:\Program Files\Calibre2\fetch-ebook-metadata.exe" --authors "A.J. Carella" --title "To Kill For" --opf >Metadata.log
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That produces the regular format found in a metadata.opf file. Leave off the '--opf' bit and you get a straight text line-by-line version. So same data, just formatted differently.
That particular ebook, was a free epub I got from Kobo, and it had no ISBN listed and no DESCRIPTION. Both lots of data were returned using the command-line above.
So it seems I can add that easily enough to my Metadata Editor program. Shame I hadn't thought to check before.