Abstract: A system and method for an application server system is disclosed in which embodiments comprise components created using tags and markup to define extensible metadata for describing and also implementing the requirements and features of the component. Embodiments of the application server also preferably comprises a marshaling application for translating communications between an accessing client application and one of the requested components. Using the marshaling application and the extensible metadata within the component, embodiments of the system may preferably provide information concerning the capabilities and functions of the component enabling many different types of client applications to access and execute the component and receive all resulting data in the appropriate format or protocol.