Book Image

OSWorkflow: A guide for Java developers and architects to integrating open-source Business Process Management

Book Image

OSWorkflow: A guide for Java developers and architects to integrating open-source Business Process Management

Overview of this book

OSWorkflow is an open-source workflow engine written entirely in Java with a flexible approach and a technical user-base target. It is released under the Apache License. You can create simple or complex workflows, depending on your needs. You can focus your work on the business logic and rules. No more Petri Net or finite state machine coding! You can integrate OSWorkflow into your application with a minimum of fuss. OSWorkflow provides all of the workflow constructs that you might encounter in real-life processes, such as steps, conditions, loops, splits, joins, roles, etc.This book explains in detail all the various aspects of OSWorkflow, without assuming any prior knowledge of Business Process Management. Real-life examples are used to clarify concepts.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
OSWorkflow
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Introduction

Persisting Instance Information


OSWorkflow delegates the responsibility of loading and storing instance data to the WorkflowStore. Later in the section we'll see the different built-in alternatives. First, we'll take a look at exactly which data is made persistent.

The data that is made persistent in OSWorkflow when you use one of the database‑backed alternatives is as follows:

  • Workflow entry: The instance header data, such as process name, abstract state, etc.

  • Current and history steps: The steps that were travelled and the one that the workflow is in.

  • PropertySet: The persistent instance-specific data.

The following figure displays the relationships between them.

OSWorkflow gives several choices for storing this information. It's very important that you chose your strategy carefully for maintenance and performance reasons. You can configure the persistence strategy in the osworkflow.xml file.

Persistence Choices

The following are the built-in WorkflowStore implementations in OSWorkflow:

Memory...