1 is the direction will be moving towards in head as that layer that actually deploys the web app should just be given the metadata that describes what the web app consists of. Any number of other deployers can have run earlier in the deployment phase to produce this metadata from various sources. A hybrid approach that moves closer to what is needed in jboss5 would be a plugin into the tomcat deployer that allowed modification of the WebMetaData. This needs to be an optional plugin binding so that we don't have to pulling in the entire webservice stack for a tomcat only config. If the plugin has modifed that data, then the tomcat deployer can write out a modified web.xml and reference it via the alt-dd. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3978626#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...