jaikiran, thanks, i don't have aan ejb-jar.xml file. i'm referring to the bill burke ejb3 book and contained examples, and there is no ejb-jar.xml file there; so i googled ejb3 jarstructure and came across this post; http://www.jboss.org/?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=103680 which states it is not needed if you're using annotations which i am so then i reviewed my jar file structure and found that my persistence.xml file (which i believe is the only configuration file needed in the jar) was misplaced reshuffled and built a new jar and hey presto, it's recognised! (recongised by a scrolling of "java.sql.SQLException: Io exception: The Network Adapter could not establish the connection" errors in the cmd line, but hey, it's recognised, it's progress!) thanks for the tip off :) View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4075506#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...