Injecting external object into custom activity

[gubespam]

In jbpm, you can use object references to have jbpm to dynamically inject objects into custom activities, like below:

{code}
import org.jbpm.api.activity.ExternalActivityBehaviour;

public class Custom implements ExternalActivityBehaviour

{

    private Object externalThing;
    public void setExternalThing( final Object externalThing )

    {

        this.externalThing = externalThing;

    }

    // ...

}
{code}

{code}
<process name="sample_process">
    <start name="start">
        <transition to="custom" />
    </start>
    <custom class="Custom" name="custom">
        <property name="externalThing"><object expr="#{munchkinLand}" /></property>
    </custom>
</process>
{code}

I remember reading somewhere (can't find it now), that jbpm will search up the context chain until it finds an object with the given name ("munchkinLand" above). My question is, how does one inject an external resourceinto jBPM so that it can find it?

[kukeltje]

define external? Remote EJB? afaik, the spring integration has something and jBPM 4.4 will support CDI

[gubespam]

I suppose I am asking about a general solution where I can inject any arbitrary object into jbpm for use in the JUEL expressions.

In my specific case, I have a Spring application, but I am not using Spring to configure jBPM (I am planning on getting a reference to the process engine via JNDI lookup).