Hmm, presumably injecting it as a parameter to some lifecycle method ensures the property has actually been configured correctly (ORBService may setORB(...) in e.g. startService()), whereas injecting it as a property on the bean does not. Property injection is built on the assumption that a bean's properties are initialized at bean creation time I guess? Besides, if I inject it as a property of my bean, I may be tempted to use it in create() rather than start(), which would be against the guidelines I think. So the correct approach would seem to be | <start> | <parameter><inject bean="ORBService" property="ORB"/></parameter> | </start> | View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4152398#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...