As implement extends, I find tests failing and have to decide if they are real failures or not. Here is my current one. <?xml version="1.0"?> <cdl:cdl xmlns:cdl="http://www.gridforum.org/namespaces/2005/02/cddlm/CDL-1.0" xmlns="http://example.org/webapps" > <cdl:configuration> <server> <port>8080</port> <security>true</security> <webapps/> </server> </cdl:configuration> <cdl:system> <tomcat cdl:extends="server"> <basedir> </basedir> </tomcat> </cdl:system> </cdl:cdl> This file fails to resolve extends="server" because the xmlns="http://example.org/webapps" declaration puts the server declaration into that ns. My extends lookup logic assumes that any localname without a namespace is in the empty namepace. Question is, is that the right assumption? The other, perfectly valid one, would be to say that any localname in an extends declaration is in the same namespace as the element that is being extended. To get something in the empty namespace, I'd have to say extends=":something". I dont see anything in the spec which covers this issue, so will file this as an issue on ggf.org. -steve