An enterprise component-based software development system includes a component platform with a number of development tools and services that enable rapid and straightforward development of component-based systems. The component platform describes a middle tier architecture for a multi-tier, multi-user application. It defines the services and facilities as well as the structure in which components can execute. It helps to provide an extensible platform for the construction, management and execution of component-based software. A messaging platform facilitates communication between different computers. When a component requests a service from another component, the request is serialized and encoded into a platform-independent language such as XML. The XML-encoded message is transmitted over the Internet using an HTTP protocol to a receiving computer, which validates the message and delivers it to the component providing the requested service. Since XML is a platform and architecture independent language, requests processed in this way can be used by a wide variety of disparate systems.