I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Tomcat is what got us in the hot water that is burning our skin today. The whole viewpoint that application servers are big and heavyweight is antiquated. What people don't realize is that Tomcat is more "proprietary" and difficult to use than just using an application server. (Shoot, Glassfish starts nearly as fast as Tomcat these days! - http://raibledesigns.com/rd/entry/glassfish_2_vs_tomcat_6) Please don't assume that I am biased towards application servers or I have any investment in them at all. One year ago I would have been the first person to slander application servers. After taking a very extensive look at Seam, I realize that we have painted ourselves into a corner by discarded services like JNDI and JTA and trying to run on pure servlet containers. It is actually harder to go without them. While Tomcat support is interesting from an academic perspective, it is simply not that beneficial. Besides, all you have to do to "upgrade" Tomcat to an application server is to dump the embedded JBoss in the global library directory of Tomcat. While on the one had this just turns JBoss inside out, putting Tomcat on top rather than the application server itself, it at least allows you to use the services that are known, supported, and capable. All this isn't to say that Seam isn't supporting Tomcat. I think all of the examples run on Tomcat. What I am saying is that frankly I don't think it is the right direction anymore. You should really give the Java EE spec another look, especially with Web Beans on the way. Tomcat is just a module, a servlet module. If you want to use Tomcat, just write servlets or Struts apps. These opinions are my own. I am not speaking for the Seam developers. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4087997#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...