The Mdbs are associated with a rar in the jboss.xml. Then via annotations given activation config. I believe it is the activation config that informs the container to start it up. Please correct me if I am wrong. As for the depends issue, I used @Depends, a jboss specific annotation, to get to to first load the session beans that the mdbs depend on. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4198380#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...