topic Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process in Alfresco Archive

Proposal: a new API to end a process

f_lombardo — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 09:50:47 GMT

Hi all,what do you think about creating a new API to end a process? Will it have some drawbacks?Thanks.ByeFranco

Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process

frederikherema1 — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 10:00:33 GMT

"Ending" a process externally is not really BPMN-compliant, if it's not modeled in explicitly () However, we have a method on the runtime service which terminates an existing process. The process will just stop, only any "execution-listeners" -which are defined on "event=end" of the process- will be called:


 /** Delete an existing runtime process instance.
   * @param processInstanceId id of process instance to delete, cannot be null.
   * @param deleteReason reason for deleting, can be null.
   * @throws ActivitiObjectNotFoundException when no process instance is found with the given id.
   */
  void deleteProcessInstance(String processInstanceId, String deleteReason);

Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process

f_lombardo — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:55:18 GMT

Does this method "clean up" the history of the process?

Thanks.

Bye

Franco

Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process

frederikherema1 — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:18:05 GMT

It does not, you're required to delete the HistoricProcessInstance using the HistoroService, AFTER you deleted the runtime one.

Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process

f_lombardo — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 10:24:43 GMT

Uhm… IMHO it sounds a bit confusing: I have to delete a process in order to end it, while the "delete" API doesn't delete it completely…

Anyway I'll try.

Thanks a lot.

Bye

Franco

Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process

jbarrez — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 11:46:44 GMT

The reason for this is that some companies want to keep an audit trail of the history, even when things are deleted.

Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process

frederikherema1 — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 12:43:19 GMT

The same concept as completing a process is applied, once completed it doen't exist anymore in the runtime. History is kept for audit-trail as Joram said.

Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process

dimitrihautot — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:26:39 GMT

Hello,

For my business case, I need to be able to delete active (i.e. not completed) process instances.
However, for selected users, these deleted instances should be visible.

I am already using the API suggested method
void deleteProcessInstance(String processInstanceId, String deleteReason);for that purpose.

However, I don't see a way to query the (Historic)ProcessInstanceQuery interfaces to include these deleted instances: methods "finished()" and "unfinished()" seem to only take into account the "complete" status of a process instance. Am I wrong?

Thanks!

Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process

jbarrez — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:38:14 GMT

these deleted instances: methods "finished()" and "unfinished()" seem to only take into account the "complete" status of a process instance. Am I wrong?

Indeed that is correct.

When you query the historic process instance by id, don't they just show up in the query results?

Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process

frederikherema1 — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:38:22 GMT

Perhaps we need a similar query-possibility as we have for HistoricTasks:


/** Only select historic task instances with the given task delete reason. */
  HistoricTaskInstanceQuery taskDeleteReason(String taskDeleteReason);

When deleting a process, a reason can be passed. If we allow for HistoricProcessInstances to be queries on that, you can differentiate between those processes. A current workaround is maybe to inspect the "end-activity" to see if it has reached the actual end-event or not…

Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process

dimitrihautot — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:00:06 GMT

Hello team and community,

Indeed, the HistoricProcessInstanceQuery allows to select both running and deleted instances.
As suggested by Frederik, the "end-activity" can be used as a filter, and refinement can be made on "delete reason" string.

So there is definitely a way to find out deleted instances, but as suggested, having a filtering API on the query would be the best.

Thanks for your support, and apologies for delayed feedback…

Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process

jbarrez — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 10:23:03 GMT

The easiest to get that in the engine is:

- create apull request yourself of course 😉
- create a jira issue with a link to this forum post so we can plan it

Re: Proposal: a new API to end a process

avikganguly — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 10:35:02 GMT

Extremely helpful thread.

Basically, what I understood from it is that the runtime traces of the instance gets deleted keeping the historic instance for audit.

I was kind of hoping that it was a soft delete at the runtime-level as well. That way, it would be very easy to implement an undo delete method in case the process instance needs to be returned to the active pool after inspection from higher roles in the role hierarchy.

Maybe, what I am saying is not sounding BPMN compliant but there are already a lot of process instances in the rejected state which needs this feature and remodelling the workflows to have a different state like "On Hold" is not sounding like a great option because of migration issues.