<activity name="s" class="com.customer.OurSapIntegration"> | <field name="server"><string value="sap.intranet.customer.com"/></field> | <transition to="next" /> | </activity> can be given a shortcut like this <sap name="s" server="sap.intranet.customer.com"> | <transition to="next" /> | </sap> to improve readability. Additions (including introduction of shortcuts like these) can even be done in micro version updates as they don't break existing backwards compatibility. The esb node was a special case and such quick-fixes must be avoided in the future. The biggest problem with the esb node is that the action handler was located in the esb jar and not in the jbpm-jpdl jar. That way incompatibilities appeared between (jbpmruntime+designer) and (esbnode) Also, there can be dependencies of activity implemenetations on certain configurations on the node structure properties. For example, a sequence implementation might require that the isPreviousNeeded property is set on the node. Such things further complicate the reading and writing process XML by hand. The good part of the PVM is that the upper xml example snippet will become persistable in the generic PVM DB schema. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4161663#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...