You'll have to explicitly mark dependencies (using JBoss specific descriptor files) between those .ear files. I need to take a look at which file the dependencies need to be specified in for AS-5 (and what the dependency looks like). In the meantime do a forum search in the JBoss AS user forum http://community.jboss.org/community/jbossas and see if you can find something useful. I remember there were some discussions around this.