&quot;alex.loubyansky(a)jboss.com&quot; wrote : In XB empty string processing is different for simple and complex types. I.e. for the following element | <e></e> | the result will be an empty string if e is of a simple type and null if e is of a complex type. It's null for the complex types because otherwise elements of complex types would always get non-null text data which was undesirable. This is a complex type, but it is also "mixed", i.e. it can take a value. Maybe there should be some kind of @JBossXmlValue annotation where we can say we want the empty string even for complex types. I'd suggest an element on the annotation where you say you don't want the empty string data if there are child xml elements? That is the rule for the mc's property element, but there's no way to say that in an xml schema. ;-) A workaround would be to create a subclass of AbstractPropertyMetaData that initialises the value to an empty StringValueMetaData and then specify that class on @XmlElement of the setProperties() View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4172556#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...