Implementing Transition Conditions in Business Processes
 Technote (troubleshooting)
 
Problem(Abstract)
This Technote helps you to implement Java Transition Conditions inside business processes.
 
Resolving the problem
You can associate transition conditions with control links inside your business process. Those conditions are evaluated at runtime and their result determines the control flow of your concrete business process instance.
If the transition condition of a control link evaluates to true at runtime, the target activity of the link is activated. Otherwise, the target activity is skipped and dead-path elimination starts.

If you choose to use built-in values for you transition condition, you can choose from the following three values:
  • true
  • false
  • otherwise

If you need more flexibility, you can choose to implement your transition condition with Java code. To do that, open the properties box of the link for which you want to define a transition condition and go to the Condition page. As shown in the image below, choose Java.


Typically, you would perform one or more of the following actions inside a transition condition:
  • test data from process variables
  • test properties of the link's source activity
  • test process properties

Of course, just as in Java Snippets, you can execute arbitrary Java code. For example, you could use methods specified in the Public API of WebSphere Process Choreographer.

Testing process data
You can use the following methods inside transition conditions to work with the data belonging to a business process:
  • get<Variable Name>()
  • set<Variable Name>()

    ... where <Variable Name> is the name of the process variable you want to access. For each variable, get() and set() methods are created as well as classes that contain get() and set() methods for each part of a variable.

The following code snippet shows how the value of a variable can be tested:

The target activity of this link would only be navigated if the number of order items is larger than 25.

Testing source activity properties
The following code snippet shows how the execution state of the link's source activity can be used:

The target activity of this link would only be navigated if the state of the link's source activity is EXPIRED.
Please see the public API of WebSphere Process Choreographer to learn about the available activity properties.

Testing process properties
You can also test different process properties. The following code snippet shows how the custom properties of a business process can be used in transition conditions:

The target activity of this link would only be navigated if the customer that this process deals with is a gold customer.
Please see the public API of WebSphere Process Choreographer to learn about the available process properties.
 
 
Cross Reference information
Segment Product Component Platform Version Edition
Business Integration WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation BPEL AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Linux Red Hat - pSeries, Linux zSeries, OS/400, Solaris, Windows, z/OS 5.1 Edition Independent
 
 


Document Information


Product categories: Software > Application Servers > Distributed Application & Web Servers > WebSphere Application Server > Enterprise Edition (EE)
Operating system(s): Windows
Software version: 5.0
Software edition:
Reference #: 1141115
IBM Group: Software Group
Modified date: Sep 28, 2004