1. You should be exposing start/stop/destroy etc. methods from ServiceMBean. If your XMBean .xml file does not have them, JBoss cannot call them. 2. I'm not an XDoclet expert, but I do know that merging files is an annoyance. 3. The point of persistence is when you change the attributes of an MBean, they are saved. The policies are: OnUpdate (save when changed), NoMoreOftenThan (save when changed, but only every so often), Never (no), OnTimer (save peridocially.) I'm not sure on JBoss treats these. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4022848#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...