Systems, methods, and computer-readable media are provided for data catalogs, metadata repositories, data discovery, and data governance, and in particular, for a canonical model-driven active metadata exchange for distributed data catalogues. Disclosed implementations include an application independent metadata repository with a Canonical Data Model (CDM). The CDM maintains a single set of use case agnostic mappings between data sources and the CDM. The physical mappings of a particular entity in the CDM are used to determine the different applications that are mapped to it and what objects or data structures that are exposed by that particular data source. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed.