A program that includes expressions written in a process-based language for representing protocol-based applications as processes is disclosed. A process kernel executes the expressions in the program. The process kernel parses an expression to obtain syntactical elements that represent a queue, a set of queue delimiters, a query, a sequence delimiter, and other actions. The process kernel further translates the expression as a process whose first action is submitting the query as another process to the queue and after which the process continues with other actions. The query includes an organization scheme formed from a customizable, tag-based language that contains data and describes data.