Like technical metadata, business metadata includes information about transformations, aggregations, and schedules. However, all business metadata is given in business terms rather than technological terms. Business metadata should provide business users all the information needed to understand, locate, and use the data in the data warehouse in a way that fits naturally with their data analysis tasks.

The Data Warehouse Center is a metadata-driven system that captures metadata as processes are defined and can exchange metadata with any system that conforms to IBM's Metadata Interchange Language, the Metadata Interchange Specification (MDIS) adopted by the Metadata Coalition, or the Common Warehouse Metadata Interchange specification adopted by the Object Management Group. In addition to the interchange, an open, published API interface is provided to enable applications to access, search, and update the Data Warehouse Center information catalog.