JBoss Cache actually basically does it that way. The downside to it is that it masks errors (if the JChannelFactory really should be found). For that reason I'm tempted to change the JBC behavior so it fails if it can't find a configured JChannelFactory. But it sounds like the JBM case is different from JBC in that you have a standard config file that you want to work in multiple environments. JBC doesn't have such a requirement. So, for JBM what you propose sounds reasonable. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3997649#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...