Well annotations can define the meta data ok, but i dont intend to use them for deployment related details. Deployment descriptor is the right place for it. For example I used jboss.xml for the local-jndi-name only and used annotations for Management interface, Local interface and declaring the class as service, but this hard-codes the servicename. I was trying to figure out a way to override the service name from jboss.xml, and that's why looking for the DTD. Of course i can replace the annotation values in the source at the time of build , but that requires my code to be checked-out (writable), plus I dont know how the java5 enabled IDE behave on scanning the variable names instead of the valid values. So even a hard coded deployment descriptor is of same category. If xdoclet is out of picture, i would prefer to store templates for deployment-descritors and populate them to generate packages for release. In case you have a better idea, do let me know. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3970397#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...