This is more of a SEAM question, but if anyone has an answer here I would appreciate it.

In the dvd example a process instance is retrieved using an entity bean's id. Is jBPM aware of all entity beans or how is it aware that there is a process that has an orderId of x value?

ProcessInstance pi = (ProcessInstance) context.getSession()
 .createQuery("select pi from LongInstance si join si.processInstance pi " +
 "where si.name = 'orderId' and si.value = :orderId")
 .setLong( "orderId", order.getOrderId() )
 .uniqueResult();