A fatal exception occurs when the process model has a design flaw and cannot be resolved regardless of how many times the instance is resubmitted, for example, the model violates a BPMN execution rule.

In the event of a fatal exception, the status of the step that causes the exception is changed to Failed, the process instance status is changed to Failed, and no further action can be taken. The process instance is cleared from the Dynamic Business Orchestrator cache leaving only an Audit Trail of the instance for future analysis.