adrian wrote : Maybe there should be some kind of @JBossXmlValue | annotation where we can say we want the empty string even for complex types. This alone doesn't make sense to me. I.e. the property could always be initialized to an empty string and if there was actual data it would override it. adrian wrote : I'd suggest an element on the annotation where you say you don't want | the empty string data if there are child xml elements? Yes, I was thinking you needed this one. An alternative could be a way to specify the default value (which in your case would be an empty string) in case there is no content. Do you always have only one child? Or there could be more? View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4172566#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...