Hi Mark. I agree 100% with you, synchronous delivery shouldn't be the default paradigm in a SOA world. And I think everybody starting with the ESB should read at least some of the literature you mentioned (I like especially Gregor Hohpes articles and interviews on that). But at some layer close to the client you often try to hide the asynchronism if possible (e.g. the UI should display some result if possible synchronously). In our app we face this requirement but since we do not expose the ServiceInvoker to the client, the client accesses a SLSB instead as entry point. And it will behave synchronously if we get an answer within the timeout period, otherwise the client will get a "try to fetch result later on"... I agree, that people should not be motivated to use synchronism in a SOA, but it would be nice to have it supported better out-of-the-box... Anyway, for the moment it seems I have to implement the code around the ServiceInvoker myself :-/. But at least I can post the code for other people facing this requirement later... View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4193018#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...