If you attempt to bind a subcontext via <lookup> in the naming subsystem it will fail when anything is looked up under it. To reproduce, add <lookup name="java:jboss/ds" lookup="java:jboss/datasources"/>, and then look up something under java:jboss/ds/ In ServiceBasedNamingStore.lookup() it needs to return a ResolveResult, but the (!(obj instanceof NamingContext)) check skips it. As a work-around, you can write an object factory which looks up the sub-context and then returns a wrapper around it, a Context implementation which simply delegates all methods to the original context. Since that wrapper is not a NamingContext instance, it works.
Eduardo Martins <emartins.redhat> made a comment on jira AS7-6655 Allowing resolveresult for naming contexts obtained through managed ref factories
Eduardo Martins <emartins.redhat> made a comment on jira AS7-6655 Please note, the fix allows this use case to go through, yet it does not introduce any change wrt msc dependencies, which are globally under discussion in the context of AS7-6787