We present a novel approach for the implementation of efficient and dependable web service engines (WSEs). A WSE instance represents a single node in a distributed network of participants that communicate using XML messages. We introduce a fully declarative language customtailored to XML message processing that allows to specify business processes in a concise manner. To support the efficient and reliable evaluation of our language, we show how to augment a native, transactional XML data store with efficient and reliable XML message queues.