a @NotNull doesn't help by itself, it has to have a "required=true" also, hope this gets fixed somewhere between JSF 2 and the JSR303. No matter how you validate, you are bound to get other persistence exeptions. Either handle them more gracefully in code or then through exception rules in pages.xml when the application is no longer in debug mode View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4119527#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...