Techniques for facilitating the sharing of metadata. In one set of embodiments, a metadata document is referenced by a plurality of software applications as a URL, the URL comprising 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 indicates that the metadata document is a shared document stored in a shared metadata repository. When an application in the plurality of software applications needs to access the metadata document, the URL is passed to a URL resolver configured to identify the shared metadata repository based on configuration information associated with the application. The metadata document is then retrieved from the shared metadata repository. Since many existing application framework components and standards are adapted to reference metadata documents as URLs, embodiments of the present invention facilitate metadata reuse with minimal or no code changes to the applications or their underlying framework.