What I was thinking of is that the install/uninstall actions would be handled as orthogonal behaviors rather than a single chain. Nulling them out would be the same as removing the aspect. Really what I'm suggesting is that the aop:xxx lifecycle elements populate the list of orthogonal behaviors that should be applied during that phase. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4015236#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...