If the handlers are reused, I also think they should be used in a pool. Because if you use the same handler object in multiple threads at the same time, the componentes you delegate to must also be thread safe. This can get a llittle bit tricky. I am also quite sure that introducing resue of handler object will NOT be backward compatible to a lot of handlers implemented out there. For example we are using members of the handler in abstract base implementations to prefetch some data objects for later use in more complex handlers (I konw that implementation inheritance is not considererd good design....). So if you want backward compatible it must be configurable to use pools or not. I am against using handler objects multithreaded because its makes coding much harder. View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4211447#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...