"pskhanwale" wrote : Obviously, if this is not the way to solve it, please correct me, but I think this was a classpath issue. Commets/corrections will be greatly appreciated What you have done is correct. I remember discussing a similar issue in the forum (long time back) where the classpath was missing the required jar file, which resulted in the java.naming.Reference object being returned. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4175003#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...