Including the hibernate config and jbpm config in the processarchive is never needed. I have no clue what that solves for you since you do not mention that Most likely cause is that when deploying via ant, a different hibernate config is picked up then the one you think is picked up. One which includes a reference to jndi instead of the one with the explicit connection properties View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4215387#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...