"pete.muir(a)jboss.org" wrote : I don't understand how this relates to legacy databases. The property you mark @Id is always the ID. Sure, the ID can have no meaning, but unless you want to do stuff using the dom, it doesn't really matter. Because a database may have a relationship (enforced or not) to something other than the Id. I've run across more than one legacy app that has an autonumbering Id on a table, but stores the name or something else in a related table rather than the Id value. While it's not good practice it's not something you always have the option to remediate, which means that being able to accomodate it ends up being useful. Perhaps the entityConverter itself isn't an appropriate place for this, but it really does need to be accomodated somehow. It looks like I'm not the only one thinking this either. In doing some further searches, I found another JIRA that I think relates to the issue. It seems that one of your fellow developers is attempting to address this in http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBSEAM-1589. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4071789#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...