The issue is about is being worked with. 1) The MetaData scope is bean instance at the lowest level. i.e. You can override annotations at the individual instance level, but you can also override it at the class or deployment level, etc. 2) The ENC scope is spec defined, i.e. per EJB or per WEB deployment but it is populated from annotations and their xml (or metadata) overrides. 3) The other use of the Scope(Key) is to identify the "subcontext" for JSR77, e.g. an EJB, ConnectionFactory, Servlet, etc. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3971516#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...