cron, I think the key question is: "what happens next"? If you're going to synchronously continue processing on the same process instance, then did you really need to commit it to the db at this point in time? If not, then don't do anything - just close it later. JBPM generally takes this approach - if multiple nodes and transitions can be executed synchronously, by default it won't commit any until all are done. This is a lot more efficient because it allows object caching across nodes within the transaction. If you're thinking that you want to keep the context open across multiple user interactions, as Ronald said, that's generally bad web-app practice - it scales badly. -Ed Staub View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4047555#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...