I spoke too soon .... in solving one problem I created another ... I only want the attribute to be set upon the first ever deployment. Then, when a value changes, it is stored in XML in the xmbean-attrs/ directory so that when JBoss restarts it always loads the last known value. But if I set the attribute value in the XML service file itself, then this value is *always* used when JBoss restarts and the MBean is deployed .... overriding whatever was in the xmbean-attrs/ directory. So I lose the persistent attributes totally. I set my persistPolicy to be 'onUpdate', and I guess JBoss sees a deployment as an update ... hence the default value is set into xmbean-attrs/ on deployment .... rather than being read in first. Back to the drawing board (along with 1. and 3. still). View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3983717#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...