"gavin.king(a)jboss.com" wrote : Passivation definitely does not imply serialization. EJB 3 4.2.1: The Bean Provider is required to ensure that the PrePassivate method leaves the instance ?elds and the ?elds of its associated interceptors ready to be serialized by the container. I like the 'may' bit of JPA. Now we ammend that with our own: Passivation and replication of an XPC and it's managed entities will not detach a managed entity. Leaves us with the 'how do we do that?' View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4079112#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...