Its cool how the EL automatically searches different scopes to find my domain objects. Can it look in other places besides PageContext, request, session, and application?
Yes. In fact, that is a big part of the secret sauce in JBoss Seam. You can extend the EL to resolve names in any context you can think of (JMX, LDAP, EJB3, etc.). You extend the EL by implementing an ELResolver. See the JSP 2.1 JavaDoc for details on the ELResolver interface. The ELResolver is typically installed in a ServletContextListener. If using JSF 1.2, it can be installed using the