Passivation/activation isn't a problem, because by definition we only passivate if the entities are serializable (EJB 3 4.2) and we treat the entity as a serializable object. Thus the entity becomes detached after activation (JPA 3.2.4). All working according to spec. Replication is a problem. Not so much for a transaction scoped persistence context, because you can only replicate over transactions and not within. Thus the entities becomes detached. But I agree that a XPC has a problem if a SFSB keeps a reference to an entity. As long as we do a passivation/activation cycle during replication, we're okay because the first paragraph applies. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4078636#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...