Abstract: A system and method for communicating extensible markup language (XML) documents in a service oriented architecture (SOA) are provided. XML requests are made in the form of XML documents containing programmatic requests. An XML schema defines programmatic behavior and provides instructions on how to process an XML document having a programmatic request. An application component receives an XML document with at least one programmatic request to perform a service. A generic XML request is sent to a broker that accesses a registry storing namespace information. The broker converts the generic XML request to a specific XML service request based on instruction information received from the registry. The specific XML service request (in the form of an XML document having at least one programmatic request) is translated and sent to a services component to service the request.