The spec doesn't state the intention of an extended persistence context. It only states the rules of a SFSB, entity and persistence context. Given those rules an entity drawn from a xpc and directly refered (from a field) by a SFSB must act as I said. The only thing said about an extended persistence context is that it's life cycle is not bound by a transaction, but by the SFSBs that use it (JPA 3.3). Why would you want to keep managed entities around? View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4078819#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...