in short, you use stateful SB's to maintain client state. This is required for conversation context use cases (multiple screen navigation). stateless SB's are usually providing a service for any client (e.g. run somebody's credit). If you want to use instance variables, you must use a stateful SB. read the Seam doc in your seam download. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4080192#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...