The current implementation relies on the start of Ejb3Deployment to fill in the appropriate meta data, but there is no explicit dependency defined anywhere on the Ejb3Deployment object. So the WebServiceDeployerEJB can run before the Ejb3Deployment is started hence a NPE (https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBAS-5968). I think the logic in WebServiceDeployerEJB should be moved to WebServiceDeployment, so it can have that dependency defined. In reality the web service end point should depend on the ejb container. I don't know yet how to resolve it to that point. Having an object name lying around somewhere is not the way to go (https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/EJBTHREE-1335). View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4177002#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...