1. A network router configured for forwarding a received message, the network router comprising: a network interface configured for receiving the received message from a source node, and forwarding the received message to a destination node, via an open protocol network, according to selected application operations; an extensible markup language (XML) parser configured for parsing XML tags from a portion of the received message, the XML tags specifying prescribed attributes including application-specific attributes; and an application resource configured for interpreting the prescribed attributes from the XML tags based on establishing context for interpreting the XML tags during runtime execution of the application resource, the application resource initiating the selected application operations for routing the received message to the destination node based on the interpreting.