Ok, guys. I've made a bunch of changes here, to allow the state transfer code base work with the VAM. 1) Added interface methods for the VAM to read/write to streams rather than just byte arrays (this is all JGroups used for RPC) 2) Added interface methods to the VAM so callers could pass in an Fqn as a 'region' (up until now this was extracted from MethodCalls for RPC) 3) Changed all stream read/write code in StateTransferManager, DefaultStateTransferIntegrator, DefaultStateTransferGenerator, StateTransferFactory and AbstractCacheLoader to use the marshaller rather than direct stream IO 4) Changed same classes above to not set context class loaders for regions. This is left up to the marshaller, which has knowledge of how to do this anyway. The result is simplified state transfer code (no concerns re: context class loaders) and a unified marshalling mechanism. So far, things look good and the unit tests run fine. Do shout if this does break anything - Brian, particularly interested in how this deals with regions with web app deployment in AS. Cheers, -- Manik Surtani Lead, JBoss Cache JBoss, a division of Red Hat Email: manik(a)jboss.org Telephone: +44 7786 702 706 MSN: manik(a)surtani.org Yahoo/AIM/Skype: maniksurtani