"scott.stark(a)jboss.org" wrote : | Second, explain how the tree is used given a DeploymentContext representing an ear with the full contigent of javaee components, and customized aspects like security and logging. | But to answer your question (in brief), the Deployment(Context) is structurally analyzed (I assume no predetermined managed objects) into its javaee components which determines the metadata location. This metadata location identifes a list of configuration files -security.xml, -logging.xml (besides the javaee files). These are matched to the deployer chains. e.g. The -security.xml might create an application policy that is added to the metadata repository Input=-security.xml Output=real When=some ordering after the metadata repository context is constructed e.g. A log4j.xml might create a scoped (based on classloader) logging configuration Input=log4j.xml Output=real When=some ordering after the classloader The chains are more important when you have flows like the rar deployer: ra.xml -> rar metadata -> servicemetadata -> mbean rar parser -> rar deployer -> servicedeployer -> real The reason to split the rar parser from the rar deployer is that: 1) The rar parser is not required for predetermined metadata 2) Some other parser/deployer earlier in the list can construct the rar metadata for deployment from some other mechanism and use the later rar deployer to do the real work View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3972638#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...