for the curious, my latest test reports are up on http://people.apache.org/~stevel/cddlm/2006-01-24/ This has been achieved by (a) implementing compile-time (non-lazy) reference resolution (b) fixing up the namespace references in all references to match my current "strict" interpretation. Namely -the set of known prefixes is fixed at the time a node is parsed, and doesnt change as it is moved around during extension/deployment. -as you walk a reference graph, you dont pick up extra namespace/prefix declarations -even if you declare a default ns with xmlns, you still need to prefix it when referring to nodes in extends or references. If others could publish their results, it could be quite illuminating. Steve