Using JMS requires JMS provider which not everybody wants to use. Especially if your application doesn't already use it. For example in our scenario (a distributed application) this would require setting up a central broker, something like ActiveMQ or WebSphere MQ, etc. Obviously, this is a lot of overhead for just getting timers to work. As for my proposal, there's nothing proprietary about it - it simply involves making changes to the SchedulerThread to use proper DB locking (for example using LockMode.UPGRADE_NOWAIT before executing the timer). This will prevent multiple hosts from picking up the same Timer. As to the runtime - I was simply referring to JBPM engine. Instead of relying on servlet.init() to kick start SchedulerServlet, which will only work in J2EE environments, I propose having jbpm itself start the thread. For example, when JbpmConfiguration is initialized it can start the thread. This is not a big deal for us, I was just making a comment since I'm sure there are people who do not run JBPM in J2EE environment. Hope this makes more sense. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4121977#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...