flowable/flowable-engine · error · FlowableIllegalArgumentException

no decision with id: ' ' found in definition

Error message

no decision with id: '<decisionKey>' found in definition

What it means

FlowableIllegalArgumentException thrown after the DmnDefinition was resolved but definition.getDecisionById(decisionKey) returns null — the decision key exists as a deployed definition entity, yet no <decision> element with that id is present in the parsed DMN model. This indicates the repository Decision row and the DMN XML content are inconsistent.

Solutions

1. Redeploy the .dmn resource so the model content matches the repository metadata.
2. Verify the <decision id="..."> in the .dmn XML equals the decisionKey being requested.
3. Clear/restart the engine (definition cache) after re-deploying so the fresh model is parsed.
4. Use DmnRepositoryService.getDmnModel(deploymentId) to inspect which decision ids the deployed model actually contains.

Example fix

// before
<decision id="approval_v1" name="Approval"> ... </decision>  // key used: approval
// after
<decision id="approval" name="Approval"> ... </decision>  // then redeploy
dmnRepositoryService.createDeployment().addClasspathResource("dmn/approval.dmn").deploy();

DmnModel model = dmnRepositoryService.getDmnModel(deploymentId);
if (model == null || model.getDecisionById(key) == null) {
    throw new IllegalStateException("Deployed model " + deploymentId + " has no decision id " + key);
}

try { dmnEngine.executeDecision(builder.decisionKey(key)); }
catch (FlowableIllegalArgumentException e) { log.error("Model/repository mismatch for key {}", key, e); redeployDmnResource(); }

When it happens

Trigger: Executing a decision where the key matched a Decision row in the repository, but the deployed .dmn XML does not contain a <decision id="key"> element (or the XML failed to expose that id).

Common situations: DMN XML edited to rename the decision id after deployment; repository cache holding a stale version; mismatch between decision-table id in the XML and the key used; partially failed deployment leaving metadata without the expected model content.

Understand the failure class

Background: "This is a bug, please report it": internal invariant violations, unreachable panics, and SNH errors explained — this error's family across 47 libraries.

Related errors

• byte array for resource
• Could not find deployment with id
• Could not find deployment with id
• could not get byte array from resource
• deployment does not exist

AI-assisted analysis of flowable/flowable-engine@d6d39ce1c6 (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/2f0e0d530a6c20af. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at modules/flowable-dmn-engine/src/main/java/org/flowable/dmn/engine/impl/cmd/AbstractExecuteDecisionCmd.java:191

        } else {
            throw new FlowableIllegalArgumentException("decisionKey is null");
        }

        executeDecisionContext.setDecisionId(decision.getId());
        executeDecisionContext.setDecisionVersion(decision.getVersion());
        executeDecisionContext.setDeploymentId(decision.getDeploymentId());

        DecisionCacheEntry decisionTableCacheEntry = CommandContextUtil.getDmnEngineConfiguration().getDeploymentManager().resolveDecision(decision);
        DmnDefinition dmnDefinition = decisionTableCacheEntry.getDmnDefinition();

        return dmnDefinition;
    }

    protected void execute(CommandContext commandContext, DmnDefinition definition) {
        Decision decision = definition.getDecisionById(executeDecisionContext.getDecisionKey());

        if (decision == null) {
            throw new FlowableIllegalArgumentException("no decision with id: '" + executeDecisionContext.getDecisionKey() + "' found in definition");
        }

        executeDecisionContext.setDmnElement(decision);
        CommandContextUtil.getAgenda(commandContext).planExecuteDecisionOperation(executeDecisionContext, decision);
    }
}

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