Why is in deploy.jsp QName set to null, if Namespace URI is empty ? Code from deploy.jsp: QName elementType = (nsuri.equals ("") || localPart.equals ("")) ? null : new QName (nsuri, localPart); This leads to an error in class DeploymentDescriptor (Method toXML): pw.print (" <isd:map encodingStyle=\"" + tm.encodingStyle + "\" xmlns:x=\"" + tm.elementType.getNamespaceURI () + "\" qname=\"x:" + tm.elementType.getLocalPart () + "\""); Oliver