Realize that this is an old thread, but never-the-less, this was one of the few places I came across that referenced "service message unavailable". I had the same issue unit testing my processes with a HSQL db and the DbMessageServiceFactory. Turns out you have to create a JbpmContext to get the message broker to work, i.e. add this JbpmConfiguration.getInstance().createJbpmContext(); before the message broker is invoked. If you want persistence to work then its probably a good idea to add: JbpmConfiguration.getInstance().createSchema(); prior to this as well. This will tell hibernate to create the DB schemas and enable persistence. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4155923#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...