DatabaseMetaData and Transactions

Greetings.

Having a problem with regards DatabaseMetaData retrievals within a
Transaction.  I have a large transaction running - within which database
alterations need to occur.  However, during this process I need to retrieve
Table metadata (via the DatabaseMetaData.getTables() method).  However, this
does not seem possible in POSTGRES?  I receive the following error:

ERROR: current transaction is aborted, queries ignored until end of
transaction block.

I trace that directly to a call to the getTables method of the
DatabaseMetaData implementation.

Can anyone provide me with any advice here?  Is this correct behaviour, and
is there any way (other than caching table metadata prior to, and
maintaining said cache during the transaction) to allow for meta data
retrieval during a transaction?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,

Carl