I hadn't considered nested deployments, which is why we need DeploymentUnit. If JBossMetaData had a parent reference this might be a different story, but the reason I asked was to avoid the dependency on the Deployers SPI. I mentioned ClassLoader for the case that we'd need to construct Class objects from metadata in order to check assignability/equality of bean interfaces. S, ALR View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4185605#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...