Ooops! After further investigation (by looking at the the Classes loaded by the EAR class-loader using the JMX-CONSOLE) it looks like there was a problem with the manifest Class-path entry in the EJB-JAR file. A typo was stopping the commons-httpclient.jar being added to the EAR classpath. The EAR shipped JAR files are now successfully overriding the server/default/lib classes ... Apart from the infamous commons-logging.jar file which is causing me porting headaches - and refuses to be overriden Apologies! Andy View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3982381#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...