ok, the reason for this has to with the lifecycle of the bean: When I call the em.getDelegate() in a normal business-method, the call returns an org.hibernate.ejb.EntityManagerImpl@fb765a as expected. So there seems to be no possibility to get hold of the underlying implementation in a @PostConstruct-Method... Anyway, what I'm really trying to access is the EntityManagerFactory - does anyone have an idea how to get a hold on the Factory that produced the entityManager?! View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3975117#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...