There seems to be an issue running processes outside of the container when they contain sub-process. The following code is a simple test that has one process with a contained node that is a sub-process. This code produces the following error: Exception in thread "main" org.jbpm.JbpmException: can't create a process instance when processDefinition is null | package com.mincom.ellipse.test; | | import org.jbpm.graph.def.ProcessDefinition; | import org.jbpm.graph.exe.ProcessInstance; | | public class SubProcessTest { | | public static void main(String[] args) { | ProcessDefinition superDef = ProcessDefinition.parseXmlString("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><process-definition xmlns=\"\" name=\"super\"><start-state name=\"start-state1\"><transition to=\"node1\"></transition></start-state><node name=\"node1\"><transition to=\"process-state1\"></transition></node> <process-state name=\"process-state1\"><sub-process name=\"sub\"></sub-process><transition to=\"end-state1\"></transition></process-state><end-state name=\"end-state1\"></end-state></process-definition>"); | ProcessDefinition subDef = ProcessDefinition.parseXmlString("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><process-definition xmlns=\"\" name=\"sub\"><start-state name=\"start-state1\"><transition to=\"node1\"></transition></start-state><node name=\"node1\"><transition to=\"end-state1\"></transition></node><end-state name=\"end-state1\"></end-state></process-definition>"); | ProcessInstance superInst = new ProcessInstance(superDef); | ProcessInstance subInst = new ProcessInstance(subDef); | | while(!superInst.hasEnded()) { | superInst.signal(); | } | } | } | I've done some reading about this and it seems that the JbpmContext must be initialised and any sub process definitions loaded before the super process is called and signalled. However what do you do if you are unit testing the process or indeed running processes that are not long running or deployed to the database? View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4219712#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...