petemuir, Thanks so much for your help. I've re-read the reference guide at http://docs.jboss.com/seam/latest/reference/en/html/tutorial.html#registr... and I think I figured out where I was going wrong. I found this: anonymous wrote : | 1.3.2. How it works | | The first time we navigate to the messages.jsp page, whether by a JSF postback (faces request) or a direct browser GET request (non-faces request), the page will try to resolve the messageList context variable. Since this context variable is not initialized, Seam will call the factory method findMessages(), which performs a query against the database and results in a DataModel being outjected. This DataModel provides the row data needed for rendering the <h:dataTable>. | So, this implies that Seam knows which session bean to instantiate in order to get the @Out messageList context variable, without needing to be told. You don't need to use #{messageManager.messageList} because Seam knows to use the session bean declared with @Name("messageManager") to get the value of messageList to be outjected. Alternatively, Seam can instantiate the session bean declared with in @Name("todoList") but without outjected fields. These beans are part of the Seam context, and can have methods run against them, using the #{todoList.method} syntax. Am I now thinking along the right lines? View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3977398#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...