Abstract: Services having associated metadata meeting particular criteria can be discovered. One or more services are stored. The services provide service objects to service requesters. Service requestors include compiled code and the service objects include compiled code that is linked to the compiled code of a service requester at runtime and that is executable by the compiled code of the service requestor. A metadata file is associated with each one of the services. A query message is received and includes a search query specifying particular criteria. At least some of the metadata files are searched to determine if one or more of the metadata files contain metadata that matches the particular criteria. When at least one of the metadata files contains metadata matching the particular criteria, the service associated with the metadata file is identified.