Abstract: A system and method for managing network devices using a metadata gateway. The metadata gateway provides translation of metadata to and from a database format and Interface Definition Language (IDL), which is operable across a plurality of platforms and across a plurality of programming languages. Metadata may be retrieved through the metadata gateway by a client manager application sending a request for type information for a managed object attribute or event in IDL through a CORBA Object Request Broker (ORB) to the metadata gateway, which then reads the type information from a metadata repository, where the type information is stored in a database format. The metadata gateway then translates the retrieved type information from the database format to IDL and sends the translated type information to the ORB, which sends the translated type information for the attribute or event to the client manager application.