I'm not seeing property replacement occur in the GenericObjectModelFactory calls in jboss5. It looks like we only do property replacement when the jbossxb is driven by a schema. To add support for this in the ObjectModelFactorys, is looks like the DelegatingObjectModelFactory.setValue(Object o, UnmarshallingContext navigator, String namespaceURI, String localName, String value) needs to be updated, and that the ObjectModelFactory would be queried for an isReplacePropertyRefs() method to allow it to control whether replacement happens. I'm going to add this as some of the tests rely on property replacement from descriptors. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4029564#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...