My sfsb is annotated like that:

@Stateful
@Name("messageManager")
@Conversational(ifNotBegunOutcome="messageBoxes")
public class MessageManagerBean extends ListManagerBean implements MessageManager {
 ...
}

I have the following scenario:

(The conversation has already begun before the page showing the list is displayed to the user).

@Override
@DataModel(value="msglist")
public List getList() {
 return list;
}

 @DataModelSelection(value="msglist")
 @Out(required=false) @In(required=false, create=true)
 private FMessage message;

public void select(ActionEvent event) {
 message.setGelesen(true);
 message = em.merge(message);
}

The page displaying the message uses

#{message}

and everything works well.

But if I remove

@Out(required=false) @In(required=false, create=true)

from the DatamodelSelection and instead use

#{messageManager.message}

in the message display page, something goes wrong such that I get a NullpointerException while the Facelets debug mechanism calls toString() on my message.
Why aren't the two approaches equal?