topic Re: Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway in Alfresco Archive

Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway

rishiraj_kalla — Thu, 29 May 2014 21:51:35 GMT

Hi,I am working on an application where BPM engine is developed using Activiti 5.13. There is one main process xml which conditionally invokes 4 different caller activities(sub processes) in parallel and all the 4 sub processes are routed to join using a parallel gateway. We noticed that there were

Re: Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway

martin_grofcik — Fri, 30 May 2014 06:56:14 GMT

Hi Rishi,

jUnit test would help me a lot to reproduce this issue.
http://forums.activiti.org/content/sticky-how-write-unit-test

Regards
Martin

Re: Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway

rishiraj_kalla — Fri, 30 May 2014 12:58:06 GMT

Hi Martin,

Thanks for your reply, I have created jUnit test and a sample process but wasn't able to reproduce this, I was just wondering if there is any way to mark such instances as complete as we have instances in production environment which needs to be marked as complete and they are stuck at the parallel gateway and does not have any end time for it. In the meantime I will continue to work on more scenarios to see if I can reproduce this.

Appreciate your help.

Thanks,
Rishi

Re: Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway

rishiraj_kalla — Sat, 31 May 2014 23:30:15 GMT

Hi,

After further searching on forum I found the below link which very much resembles the situation where I am in.

http://forums.activiti.org/content/process-end-time-not-available-process-end-listener

I have further explored and figured out that all the task of the main process as well as subprocesses triggered by the main process instance id are completed but the main or parent process instance does not have and end time, and action history for the same instance indicate that there is no end time for the parallel gateway which is the last step before completion of the instance.

Since we are using SpringProcessEngineConfiguration embedded in web server, I am not sure if there is any way to mark such instance completed again.

Could it be possible that the end time for the process instance is NULL because either ProcessInstanceEndHandler hasn't yet been invoked as the parallel gateway is not ended yet or it was invoked but the DB changes wasn't flushed.

Just wondering if the first condition above is true then how can I mark the parallel gateway as completed so that ProcessInstanceEndHandler gets invoked and do the rest of the job.

Eagerly looking for the help.

Regards,
Rishi

Re: Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway

jbarrez — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 09:54:49 GMT

Could you paste the content of the ACT_RU_EXECUTION for this process instance? That will learn us where everything is.

Re: Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway

rishiraj_kalla — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 17:56:41 GMT

Thanks for your reply, I have attached the formatted text file having the content of ACT_RU_EXECUTION. I have also attached the content of ACT_HI_ACTINST if that helps further.

Regards,
Rishi

Re: Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway

rishiraj_kalla — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 04:43:17 GMT

Hi,

After further testing I have noticed that if there is any exception thrown by the global process execution listener (at process end event) this inconsistent state arrives, I might be wrong but it looked like the context get removed and the transactions done through it are rolled back causing execution in unstable mode,perhaps in such a condition like I am facing where it seems that instance is stuck up at gateway and since gateway activity cannot be signaled I could not figure out any way to resume this instance so that it gets back on track.

Please suggest if there is any way here.

With Thanks and Regards,
Rishi

Re: Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway

jbarrez — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 08:34:40 GMT

It's really hard to follow with one long sentence…. could you try to make things a bit clearer?

Re: Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway

rishiraj_kalla — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 13:55:35 GMT

Hi Joram,

Apologies for the long sentence, here is summary:
1. Process has an execution listener on the end event
2. The execution listener threw an exception which made the instance to roll back to parallel gateway
3. As per the ACT_HI_ACTINST and ACT_RU_EXECUTION the instance is waiting at parallel gateway

I am looking for any API in Activiti version 5.13 to make this instance move ahead.

With Thanks and Regards,
Rishi

Re: Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway

frederikherema1 — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 09:00:58 GMT

Is it possible to share the process bpmn? Could be something in the process design that is causing this. The transactional system in activiti is designed to work from one wait-state to another in a single transaction. If it rolls back to the parallel gateway, this means there is an async activity after the parallel gateway, forcing activiti to save execution state right here.

Re: Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway

rishiraj_kalla — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 02:20:14 GMT

Hi Frederik,

Thanks for your reply, due to organization policy I may not be able to share the entire bpmn process.

I am working on creating a test case which can reproduce the similar issue and will post the BPMN process xml for that soon.

However still I have a doubt that even due to process design if this issue has occurred, is there any way through API to resume such instances?

I think this might be difficult to answer without process xml and test case, but any pointers towards that will be of great help.

With Thanks and Regards,
Rishi

Re: Process instances got stuck at the parallel gateway

trademak — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 10:51:32 GMT

Hi Rishi,

This really depends on the process definition. Every incoming sequence flow of a parallel gateway must be completed before the parallel gateway will continue. So if you have a way to trigger any remaining sequence flow to complete this should be possible.

Best regards,