Damian, I see what you are saying, however there are situations where you might want the it initialized (e.g. the value is provided by a factory) - so, yes, it can provide a value if it doesn't exist yet. And the current behaviour is consistent with the rest of Seam (when you reference a value using EL it's create=true and not just a lookup). I'm not sure of the best solution, but will think about it some more. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4099564#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...