I like the use of Configuration.createX() rather than setX/getX. A concern I have with using the configuration to provide these is it tends to expose the internal objects used by the cache as part of the public API. Using a factory approach gets around that issue, since there's no reason two calls to createX() should return the same instance. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4037301#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...