Ok, I should have read the comments in the XSD before posting, it's actually the EJB spec.

Are you sure the value should be fixed here?

Ok, let's revisit version attribute again. In jboss_5_0.xsd it is documented as the ejb spec version. But in case of DTD, it's the DTD version (from JBossMetaData):

/**
 * Callback for the DTD information
 */
 @XmlTransient
 public void setDTD(String root, String publicId, String systemId)
 {
 this.dtdPublicId = publicId;
 this.dtdSystemId = systemId;
 // Set the version based on the public id
 if (dtdPublicId != null && dtdPublicId.contains("3.0"))
 setVersion("3.0");
 if (dtdPublicId != null && dtdPublicId.contains("3.2"))
 setVersion("3.2");
 if (dtdPublicId != null && dtdPublicId.contains("4.0"))
 setVersion("4.0");
 if (dtdPublicId != null && dtdPublicId.contains("4.2"))
 setVersion("4.2");
 if (dtdPublicId != null && dtdPublicId.contains("5.0"))
 setVersion("5.0");
 }

protected JBoss50MetaData create()
 {
 JBoss50MetaData metaData = new JBoss50MetaData();
 metaData.setVersion("3.0");
 metaData.setEjbVersion("3.0");
 return metaData;
 }

Coming back to this issue. I am going to make the JBossMetaData.getVersion() return the version of the schema, not the EJB version. There is an attribute (@XmlTransient) ejbVersion which returns the EJB spec version. It is currently set during EjbJar and JBoss metadata merge and in JBoss50Creator. If there needs to be a schema element or attribute to specify the EJB spec version in the JBoss descriptor or annotation then please open a Jira issue. Thanks.

getEjbVersion() returns the EJB spec version - right. But there is no xsd component in jboss schema for it. The value is set to the EJB version from the ejb-jar.xml and/or JBoss50Creator (at the initialization).

Version attribute reflects not the AS version but the schema version of the deployment descriptor. Although, I don't see where it is actually used.