OK, I agree with your last comment (not to imply that I disagreed with other comments) since I would only store information that is relevant to process flow in a task or process variable. All other information would be stored using my own persistence of my own domain objects. You mentioned "Copying them over should not be for you to worry, but the container and api of the engine (and it does that for you). Variables for tasks are stored separately and only when ' committed' (task is finished) they are copied to the processlevel again.... so I do not see a problem here." You mean copying them from the task to the process instance? But if I can not hold on to a task across contexts then I have to copy any working task variables out of the task and into my own session container, is that correct? Again, I guess this is not that big of a deal since I would not use the task or process instance as a container for application data only for values that are relevant to process flow. The BPM engine that I have been using has a logon/logoff session model and I guess I just got used to being able to retain whatever process objects I wanted in the session. It is just a matter of understanding jBPM operational requirements and changing my thinking. Your comments have been helpful. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4021610#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...