topic Re: Business keys & external reference IDs in Alfresco Archive

Business keys & external reference IDs

rkroll — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:48:34 GMT

It appears that the intent of Activiti's "business key" is that of an external ID for a given process instance. This works well in the case where you need to uniquely identify a process instance without needing to know its internal ID. The current functionality is that of an external reference ID

Re: Business keys & external reference IDs

ronald_van_kuij — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:52:05 GMT

What I tried once was to use 'composite' businesskeys'. I used a postfix and mades sure I could retrieve the process instances based on 'like' queries with a goooooood index. This worked and I think that is what a business key could be.

Another solution is to do the reverse and store the process instance id with your domain data.

Both work with the advantage that the second does not need changes in Activiti.

Re: Business keys & external reference IDs

rkroll — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:03:23 GMT

Storing the instance with our domain data was the workaround I was planning, but it just seems like it would be easy to implement on the Activiti side. Adding an external ref column would be easily indexable and would allow for storage of whatever key the user wished to store.

Re: Business keys & external reference IDs

ronald_van_kuij — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:06:34 GMT

Or ditch the uniqueness constraint on businesskey…. That woul be my preference instead of adding a kind of but not 100% similar 'thing'

Re: Business keys & external reference IDs

rkroll — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:53:46 GMT

Do you know what the impact would be to removing the unique constraint on businesskey? That would solve all of our current problems.

Re: Business keys & external reference IDs

ronald_van_kuij — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:34:17 GMT

Do you know what the impact would be to removing the unique constraint on businesskey? That would solve all of our current problems.

Not much I think if you are aware of the fact that it is none unique.

Re: Business keys & external reference IDs

heymjo — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 08:55:56 GMT

Do you know what the impact would be to removing the unique constraint on businesskey? That would solve all of our current problems.

It seems indeed not logical not being able to start the same process multiple times for a given business key or entity, this has bothered us as well in the past.

Re: Business keys & external reference IDs

ronald_van_kuij — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:22:29 GMT

Maybe not in your business, but in the insurance business it is not uncommon

Re: Business keys & external reference IDs

heymjo — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:37:51 GMT

Maybe not in your business, but in the insurance business it is not uncommon

indeed, it totally depends on the business process. That's why i think this constraint should not be enforced by Activiti.

PS do something about the forums spam !

Re: Business keys & external reference IDs

ronald_van_kuij — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:51:51 GMT

PS do something about the forums spam !

I have no rights to do that… 😞 Not sure if they cracked the captcha or if real humans do this…

Re: Business keys & external reference IDs

alicesteve — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:19:24 GMT

I am medium sized business owner and I had just finding some business success keys online. Your thread is really helpful for me. Please do share some more ideas that help me in growing my business.

http://www.usbusinesstribune.com/

Re: Business keys & external reference IDs

johnwillson — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 04:37:10 GMT

Yeah, this business key is an external id which for process instance. Even, online business directories are used for backup data of your business. You can also use business directory scripts for fully customized listing software, it is easy to use.

http://www.business-directory-usa.org/