Gahh, the last thing I want is for Seam to turn into Spring. Still, the option of naming externally would be a plus. Maybe it could even take over managing JSF components in faces-config.xml, though I suppose it might demand more or different metadata. I'm not sure what you'd gain by moving scope annotations and initializations out to XML though. My opinion is that semantics belong in code and only code. Spring has us all coding Java in XML, and has given us the worst of the conjunction of Java and XML's inexpressveness with a dynamic interpretation that blows up only (and often) at runtime. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3966468#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...