 <p>Yes, you might run into trouble. See this link for how to solve your problem.</p> <p><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4333390/service-are-constructed-twice">@Service are constructed twice</a></p> <p>The way you proceed when creating modules seems valid to me. You have a context.xml file for each module and all will get loaded once you load the application. Your modules are self-contained and can also be used in different environments. That's pretty much the way I'd also do it.</p>