Ronald, The pi - process was a typo indeed, sorry about that :-) However, you set me on the right path in order to find my error: basically i took the sample database unit test from the userguide and just copied my custom code in that until I noticed any difference. What I did wrong: I neglected to call the jbpmContext.save() and jbpmContext.close() method in my business methods. I did this because I previously stumbled upon some transaction conflicts running in J2EE environment. I assumed these were not necessairy when running with JTA enabled. Presumably, I was wrong :-) I beleive that was the main cause of my error here. Thanks for your time! Bert View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3958667#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...