I had the same kind of problem with the hibernate validation annotations, but i was not using a4j in it. Is there any kind of exception raised when you submit the form? Try to Remove the @NotNull annotaion and then try to run you example, As its alternate use the required="true" in your jsf tags. can you mail me your code on ask4saif(a)gmail.com, i will see what i can do. Thank you View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3996391#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...