If you get the error message:

Error getting property 'foo' from bean of type java.lang.String

then probably all you have wrong is a missing hash and couple of braces to turn a simple string in to a value binding. I find this particular bug a bit difficult to track down though which is why I am drawing your attention to it here. The snippet of JSF below will fall foul of this mistake as it will attempt to access the property foo of the string "bar.baz". Probably what you want it to use "#{bar.baz}" in it's place.

<h:dataTable value="bar.baz" var="item">
	<h:column>
		<h:outputText value="#{item.foo}"/>
	</h:column>
</h:dataTable>