Proposal: a new API to end a process

[f_lombardo]

Hi all,

what do you think about creating a new API to end a process? Will it have some drawbacks?

Thanks.

Bye


Franco

[frederikherema1]

"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);
   


[f_lombardo]

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

Thanks.

Bye

Franco

[frederikherema1]

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

[f_lombardo]

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

[jbarrez]

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

[frederikherema1]

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.

[dimitrihautot]

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!

[jbarrez]

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?

[frederikherema1]

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…