its getting late now but I seem to have got it working. Changed several things and now quite sure now which combo made it all work. 1. removed the 'jdbc/' prestring from the dataource, and persistence unit seemto help alot in the end. I had a another @PersistenceContext (name='..') EntityManager em but noticed that it should have been unitName = "..". The name attribute refers to a jndi ref and i was getting alll sorts of exceptions. however the long and short of now appears to work . - how reproducable it'll be in the morning i dont know. Goodnight View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4082311#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...