Yes, and look at the methods on MBeanServerConnection for things you can do (get/set attributes, invoke methods). Re #1 & #2: from an mbean? I have no idea. How to get the Principal depends on the technology (and your have to read the JSR for the tech to find out). However, I think that the Principal is stored in the thread-local storage (no I don't know offhand how to get it from there). Re #4: There is no JBoss API for accessing LDAP. JBoss AS uses the JNDI API to do its JNDI work. I have also seen other LDAP APIs for Java (a google should turn them up) View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4247993#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...