Data warehouse is an intelligent store of data. A metadata is critical for implementing data warehouse. Integrating data warehouse with its metadata helps create a more adaptive information system. This paper proposes a metadata-oriented data warehouse architecture that consists of seven components: legacy, extracting, operational data store, data warehouse, data mart, application, and metadata. A taxonomy for dataflow and metaflow is proposed for better understanding of the architecture. In addition, a metadata schema is built within the framework of the seven components. Lastly, the architecture with its metadata component is applied to a real-life data warehouse project for a large medical center in order to illustrate its practical usefulness.