I completely agree with you Adrian, we shouldn't alter one api to fix someone else's problems. My suggestion was to have a method in the MetaValueFactory object where you pass a MetaType and it returns a mutable MetaValue object. I was not suggesting putting empty MetaValues where ever you find nulls. I thought maybe other people might want it to. I wouldn't go so far as saying that just because I would want that that everyone else must want it. I was definitely deferring that to you guys to determine. :) There isn't a "Fix the original problem" in this situation. Thanks View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4128424#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...