This was an issue also discussed today on Freenode IRC's #jboss. :) The EJB 3.1 Specification addresses application lifecycle via the @Singleton bean. Until that support arrives, JBoss has a vendor-specific extension called the @Service bean, which is a singleton that optionally supports MBean (@Management) interfaces w/ lifecycle. @see http://docs.jboss.org/ejb3/app-server/reference/build/reference/en/html/j... S, ALR View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4202012#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...