Issue in suspend or activate a process instance but the 'status' not refresh till 'restart' the J2EE Server

[roundmonkey]

Recently I am developing a system for our Gov and I found a issue during "Suspend/Activate" a process instance.

Following steps can recreate this issue:

1. Deployed the "activiti-rest" and the "activiti-explorer" into a same jboss, and make sure they connected to a same DB(I use the DB Jndi)

2. Suspend or activate a process instance in the "activiti-explore".

3. I found after I suspend or activate a process instance thru the activiti-explorer, I can still use the REST interface "http://localhost:8080/activiti-rest/service/runtime/process-instances" to start the process instance. Seems the "status" not refresh immediately…and I restart the JBOSS, then I tried to start the process instance like "myProcess" then I got the exception "myProcess:9:8451 is suspended, can not start".

My question is:

Why the activated or suspended status not refresh immediately? until I restart the JBOSS/TOMCAT, then the activated or suspended status will be effected? This is quite inconvenience, is there any way to activate or suspend the process instance immediately or I missed something else?

[frederikherema1]

I guess you're talking about suspending a process definition, rather than a process instance? The issue here has to do with process-definition caching. Parsed process definitions are cached in-memory for performance reasons. An entity updated in another JVM/activiti-engine will nog update the cache on other engines, leaving behind the "unsuspended" definition to use, when it should be suspended.

[roundmonkey]

Hi Fred,

Yes, to suspend the definition in activiti-explorer, but the status was not changed in activiti-rest.

So, this issue caused by the process definition status is maintained in memory right?

[jbarrez]

Yes, correct. And also because you have two instances of the Activiti engine, with their own cache.

A solution would be to package both apps in one webapp, with one Activiti engine.
Another, way more advanced one, would be to use a distributed cache: http://www.jorambarrez.be/blog/2013/01/03/distributed-cache-activiti/

[roundmonkey]

Hi jbarrez,

According to your solution, merged two app into one, and the issue solved, thanks again.