I am pretty new to JBoss myself, but ran into similar problems with deploying datasource xml files (e.g. in my current project when I would deploy a new rdcs-mysqldb-ds.xml file, just changing the IP address of the Database server it would not switch).
I found that removing the datasource file and deleting the tmp and work directories, then starting JBoss, and then putting the datasource file into the deployment directory and watching the command prompt/logs to see if the data source would bind correctly. Its a bit drastic I guess, but it worked for me.
Actually the best thing we did in our project was write an
Ant deployment script that packaged everything into an .ear and also copied the -ds.xml file in the correct place and then we gained a lot of stability in our project development.