Your right! Guess I should read better. Earlier I had it complaining about the componentContext.xml when I had it sitting in the EAR. I think I know whats happening, at least with the applicationContext.xml... Even though the ContextLoaderListener is started from the web.xml, it seems that the "ClassLoader" it runs with does not have visibility to the WAR deploy. This I can understand, and makes sense now. What I am still having a hard time understanding is why everything at the WAR level can't see whats in the EAR level. When I place the HG-DataAccess.jar in the EAR (this has the componentContext.xml), it blows up with the same error as above, but indicating it can't find the componentContext.xml instead. This seems to indicate that the WAR can't see into the EAR. Furthermore, when I have Spring jar in the EAR, it complains upon deployment of the web.xml that it can't find the ContextLoaderListener class. Finally, everything works fine if I take the EAR out of the equation, and put the HG-DataSource.jar in the Server /lib and the HG-Service.WAR (which contains the HG-Service.jar) in the Server /deploy. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4020817#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...