Thanks for that answer, I've got a few more questions on this topic: 1) In the case with the EAR/lib directory containing JARs that you mentioned, wouldn't an archive within the EAR still look at EAR/lib JARs even with Java2ParentDelegation set to true? Because (based on what I figure from reading the JBoss ClassLoading wikis) the class would first look in its own UCL, then would look at the EAR's UCL (which would contain the JARs in EAR/lib...is my reasoning not correct here? 2) I read that you can have, in the deploy directory itself, a regular JAR file (i.e. I don't mean EJB-JAR, but a regular JAR containing utility or other classes that you may want on your classpath)...is this really possible? How would this JAR in the deploy directory fit into the ClassLoader "hierarchy" explained at http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=JBossClassLoadingUseCases? What would it be visible to? 3) Why should we not use the java module approach? Are there reasons that'd make it difficult to manage (like having to add them all to application.xml) or is it just not the way things are done? View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3991845#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...