19. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium storing a series of instructions which, when executed by a processing component, cause the processing component to: receive, from a software application in a plurality of software applications, a uniform resource locator (URL) for a 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; and wherein the specialized protocol name is a non-standard protocol name that is not one of HTTP, HTTPS, FILE, or FTP; and identify the shared metadata repository based on the specialized protocol name; and identify the metadata document based on configuration information associated with the software application.
19. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium storing a series of instructions which, when executed by a processing component, cause the processing component to: receive, from a software application in a plurality of software applications, a uniform resource locator (URL) for a 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; and wherein the specialized protocol name is a non-standard protocol name that is not one of HTTP, HTTPS, FILE, or FTP; and identify the shared metadata repository based on the specialized protocol name; and identify the metadata document based on configuration information associated with the software application. 21. The machine-readable medium of claim 19 , wherein identifying the shared metadata repository is further based on the namespace of the metadata document.