Bob, are you sure that there is no other jbpm.repository.hbm.xml in classpath? I do not see any problem with your configuration. If you are sure that there is no secong repository hbm then you need to do hard debugging of hibernate. In such a case you should watch org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.classes. classes is a map in Configuration class which contains all the persistent classes hibernate found. Its very unlikely that you will get the PropertyImpl entry there (because it is throwing exception). From there you need to back track to the place where it creates the Configuration object. I do not see any short cut left for you :( Rocker, you may need to look at transaction-context and spring-transaction-interceptor. Make sure spring transaction interceptor does not have useCurrent flag on. The reason why you might be getting the exception is that transaction propagation behaviour is set to "PROPAGATION_MANDATORY". But checkDb has to run in a new transaction. Because of Propagation mandatory, it does not create a transaction, expects that a transaction will be existing. But in does not find any transaction. So explodes. View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4266100#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...