1. A method for facilitating the sharing of a metadata document by a plurality of software applications, the method comprising: receiving, from a software application of the plurality of software applications, a uniform resource locator (URL) for the metadata document, the URL including a protocol component identifying a specialized protocol name and a path component identifying a name and namespace of the metadata document, the specialized protocol name indicating that the metadata document is stored in a shared metadata repository; wherein the specialized protocol name is a non-standard protocol name that is not one of HTTP, HTTPS, FILE, or FTP; and identifying the shared metadata repository based on the specialized protocol name; identifying the metadata document further based on configuration information associated with the software application.
1. A method for facilitating the sharing of a metadata document by a plurality of software applications, the method comprising: receiving, from a software application of the plurality of software applications, a uniform resource locator (URL) for the metadata document, the URL including a protocol component identifying a specialized protocol name and a path component identifying a name and namespace of the metadata document, the specialized protocol name indicating that the metadata document is stored in a shared metadata repository; wherein the specialized protocol name is a non-standard protocol name that is not one of HTTP, HTTPS, FILE, or FTP; and identifying the shared metadata repository based on the specialized protocol name; identifying the metadata document further based on configuration information associated with the software application. 6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the steps of receiving the URL and identifying the shared metadata repository are performed by a URL resolver configured to interoperate with a standard URL technology component, the standard URL technology component processes URLs on behalf of the plurality of software applications.