Working with events

Events are the flows that trigger the execution of a collaboration object. Collaborations execute business process logic to manage event data, manipulating it and coordinating it among enterprise software resources. You use Collaboration Debugger primarily to pause the processing of an event so that you can inspect its data at significant points in the business logic.

Displaying an event

When a new flow is delivered for processing to a collaboration object that you are debugging it is assigned a number and is listed beneath the collaboration object in the "Events" view.

Figure 90 shows an event that has been received by a collaboration object and is displayed in the "Events" view.

Figure 90. An event displayed in the Events view

When you display an event, Collaboration Debugger gives focus to the node where processing is paused in the "Collaboration template" editor; black squares appear in each corner of the node, indicating that it is selected, and a flag icon labeled with the event instance is displayed in the upper-left-hand corner of the node. Figure 91 shows a node where processing of the event is paused in the Collaboration template editor.

Figure 91. An event displayed in the Collaboration template editor

If there are active breakpoints set in the collaboration, the flow suspends processing while it waits for you to perform a debugging operation, and a flag icon is drawn on the node where processing is broken to represent the event as well.

You display an event to locate it in the collaboration diagram and to populate the "Variables" view with the current data in the flow.

The "Variables" view dynamically updates as you perform debugging operations, so you typically only need to display an event in the following situations:

Do one of the following to display an event:

Suspending an event

When you run an event, as described in Running an event, the flow of execution proceeds as it would normally, without pausing on any breakpoints. If you decide that you want to resume debugging the flow, you can suspend the event.

Once you have instructed Collaboration Debugger to run an event, it typically processes too quickly for you to suspend it, though service calls provide this opportunity. When a business object is sent out a service call, the business process blocks until a response is received; this provides enough time to suspend the flow prior to replying to the request, so that debugging resumes when the response is received by the collaboration.

Do one of the following to suspend an event:

Running an event

For more information on running an event, see Running an event.

Copyright IBM Corp. 2004, 2005