🤔 DMN vs. Gateway — What’s the Difference?

Many BPMN beginners wonder: “Why use DMN when I can just use an exclusive or inclusive gateway to make decisions?”

Here’s the difference:

🔸 Gateways are control-flow elements.
They route the process based on conditions defined within the BPMN model. They're great for simple logic, like:

If amount > 1000 → path A  
Else → path B  

But they quickly become hard to manage when the logic gets complex.

🔸 DMN (Decision Model and Notation) is for business decision logic.
It externalizes rules into decision tables, where you can manage complex logic cleanly and separately from the process.

🧠 Think of it like this:

• Use gateways for basic routing.

• Use DMN when decisions involve multiple inputs, conditions, or business rules that may change over time.

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✅ Example:

• Gateway: If user.age > 18, go to “Adult Flow”.

• DMN: Evaluate user.age, country, and creditScore to assign a risk category → the process then follows a risk-based path.

In our Flowable experience, using DMN helps keep BPMN diagrams simple, readable, and ready for change.