Should we store business related data as process variables?

[jainita]

Is it recommended to keep business data as process variables? 

Or we should have only activiti workflow related data in as process variables?

How do we pass business variables throughout the flow if they are not supposed to be stored as process variables?

[rallegre]

Hi,

You can use process variables for routing the flow but for business data, we suggest external data stores optimized for your application to minimize the burden on the process engine.

To manage read/write operations of business data, you need to use service tasks and implement the logic to integrate with those external systems.

[jainita]

Hi Raphael,

If that is so, Why will I even use activiti and execute service task?

I would rather pass Arguments to methods calls.

Storing business data in customized tables will increase over head when those variables should have been available in cache. 

[jainita]

Hi Raphael,

If that is so, Why will I even use activiti and execute service task?

I would rather pass Arguments to methods calls.

Storing business data in customized tables will increase over head when those variables should have been available in cache. 

[rallegre]

You can still use process variables if that makes things easier and if you are not dealing with too many, it should not impact that much the performances of the engine...

[jainita]

It is not about making things easier, its about over head due to more i/o operations on databases.

Also can you elaborate what is too many according to you?