BPMN Data Stores

[falko_menge]

Are there any ideas on how to implement BPMN Data Stores in Activiti?

As they are defined to persist beyond the scope of the process, would they be connectors to external storage systems or would Activiti provide something like an engine-wide variable scope?

[tombaeyens]

The property table could be used for that.  So it's a matter of coming up with a good API for it.  …and doing the work of implementing, of course.

I didn't see that request a lot.  I am wary about feature requests from spec like this.  Will they really be used?  Each such feature causes more API so the API will grow more complex and people will get confused more rapidly.  So we should only stick to features that are really relevant.

[tombaeyens]

Show me why our users won't just use their own persistence (like JPA) for this feature.

[jbarrez]

I've also been wondering how a BPMN data store that is defined in a model is reflected at runtime.

The spec doesnt say anything what it means to store a certain piece of data in a data store. In my experience, the data store construct is used in high-level abstract business processes. When those processes boil down to executable processes, most of the times it was replaced by a custom data storage mechanism.