However the point of these beans is to act as the POJO API for working with the XML config files. So I don't see much value in using the beans without the XML config files. So I don't see this extra-jar dependency as a big issue. Even if you were not using an XML config file, the XPath & XSD validation is extremely useful too.
I understand, though I would like to find a common binding framework which the entire project could use.
Take for example if there was a WAR deployer which took one of these objects (not a URL to an XML file or whatever), then you could programatically install web-apps with out having to deal with XML at all.
It sounds like this is possible with XMLBeans, though it would still be better IMO if it XML was not a dependency, so for embedded solutions which do not need or want any XML processing we could drop those dependencies to provide a smaller footprint.
--jason
