...solved! This may be caused by using a more recent version of the Hibernate libraries (though I doubt the older version would not create an empty List), or maybe is simply a bug that everyone would suffer. I did not yet investigate; I will submit a bug report later, if I did not cause this myself... http://fisheye.jboss.com/browse/JBPM/jbpm.3/jpdl/jar/src/main/java/org/jb... 48 List decisionConditions = null; | : | 105 } else if (decisionConditions!=null) { | 106 // backwards compatible mode based on separate DecisionCondition In my setup, database table JBPM_DECISIONCONDITION is empty, but for this Hibernate still creates an empty List. Changing into: 105 } else if (decisionConditions!=null && !decisionConditions.isEmpty()) { solved my problems. Now both <decision name="Large quantity?"> | <!-- First transition is also the default ("otherwise") branch --> | <transition name="No" to="ship item"/> | <transition name="Yes" to="Make appointment"> | <condition><![CDATA[#{quantity > 2}]]></condition> | </transition> | </decision> and <condition><![CDATA[#{contextInstance.variables['quantity'] > 2}]]></condition> work as expected (as noted earlier in this thread, using the 'expression' attribute somehow does not get the condition into the database to start with). Arjan. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4019474#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...