The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for using transport-independent resource status. Embodiments of the invention provide a mechanism for implementing a new protocol for performing resource request status updates that maintains the benefits of existing protocol (e.g., HTTP) conventions while being usable with arbitrary transport protocols. Additionally, the new protocol works with a variety of different message exchange patterns. The use of the protocol can be hidden behind a programming model that normalizes transport-specific resource status protocols, such as, for example, HTTP, with transport-independent resource status protocols, such as, for example, with a SOAP binding of the described protocol. As such, embodiments of the invention provide resource status updates over an arbitrary network transport protocol whose format and message exchange pattern is decoupled from the definition of the application.