Ah, we are using JAXB. I thought we are something like SAX. Sorry about the noise. Then, what about improving JBoss JAXB itself to maintain a complete map that maps an object property to the location of the XML file? For example: Location l = map.getLocation(object, "bindAddress"); String path = l.getPath(); int lineno = l.getLineNumber(); int column = l.getColumn(); .. This map and location information could be written generic enough so that it can be used with different configuration file formats, as long as the configuration parser (JAXB implementation in the case above) puts the appropriate information when it processes the configuration file. I hope my idea makes sense this time. :) View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4231233#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...