Metadata management assists with the goal of making changes easy in an SOA, according to analyst Maureen Fleming, program director for Business Process Automation and Application Deployment, at IDC. "The use of metadata to create a change roadmap is critical," Fleming said in an email. "It provides visibility into all the interdependencies within an application system. WebMethods gets this capability with the Cerebra acquisition."

The repository conforms to the W3C Resource Description Framework and Web Ontology Language. WebMethods did not release the sale price it paid for the Cerebra assets, but said it acquired substantially all of the assets of Cerebra.