The MyFaces extensions validator package looks like someday it will make life a lot more pleasant when designing JSF backing beans. Instead of cluttering up the markup with cumbersome extra XML, the MyFaces Extensions Validator allows you to annotation the backing bean properties. It even adopts the applicable annotations (such as nullable=false) on JPA model objects.
Unfortunately, when I added it to my RichFaces/PrettyFaces project, all the RichFaces AJAX functions stopped working. Apparently the annotation processor got in the way of the JavaScript downloading process. The AJAX support functions were not found and the Richfaces Calendar stopped responding to popup click requests – Understandably, since the JSF Calendar object was no longer found.
So, I have to do my validations the hard way for the moment.