Note, on the deployment stuff: There is nothing to prevent you from deploying both a <local-tx-datasource> and <xa-datasource> at the same time in JBoss. Since you are looking things up via JNDI you can always change the JNDI name depending upon your needs so you wouldn't have to rework anything beyond changing the JNDI in the code when the time came to use XA. Even better, use a resource-ref to introduce a logical binding between the WAR file and the underling JNDI resource. Check the Servlet/JSP spec for how to do this in JBoss. This would be the best best bet as you would only have to change the web.xml/jboss-web.xml files when the time came to make the switch. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3969925#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...