InvocationContext has always been stored in ThreadLocal, except that this was always done by the TreeCache class when you called the overloaded method. This has always had invocation-level scope. Now you'd do it explicitly and the reasons for this shift are: 1. Every time you use this, this is very explicit. Little chance of using the wrong overloaded method. 2. Cleaner interface API, since this is needed in Cache and not CacheSPI (form Hibernate, for example) +1 on the accessors/mutators being static and handling the ThreadLocal business internally. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3961755#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...