I don't think its strange to use Seam in such a system. And you're exactly right to think along the lines of DTOs. For a simple application I hate DTOs, but if we are building services you are going to have to flatten your model at *some* point, and its just a question of doing it in Java vs. doing it in XML rendering. If you're using something like JAXB for getting stuff out of your services, then you should do it in Java. My preference is for a more rest-like approach where I would render XML using a template (facelets, perhaps) and the template s responsible for flattening the data in the entities. Still not sure what a "component" is. More like a remote EJB? View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4057923#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...