Process Kinds

There are different kinds of processes. Their use and capabilities are explained in the sections below.

Business Process

Business processes are the regular kind of processes that are used to implement business cases. Business processes contain starts that can be selected by any user from his/her workflow list or from the list of star table processes.

Embedded Subprocess

An embedded subprocess is essentially a syntactical collapse of elements into a single element to hide details from process design. They are available in all other process kinds. The hierarchy of embedded subprocesses is potentially indefinite, i.e. you can create further embedded subs inside an already existing subprocess.

Since embedded subprocesses are simply a structural means for process diagram simplification, no mapping of data is required when entering or leaving this kind of subprocess (i.e. inside an embedded subprocess the same data is available as inside the caller process).

Warning

Wrapping process elements into an embedded subprocess does not influence the functionality of most process elements. But the wrapping influences the way process elements are addressed by Axon.ivy. This may cause incompatibilities with older versions of the process and will hinder you to deploy such a process over an already deployed older version of the process. The process elements that may cause such incompatibilities are:

• Task Switch Gateway

• Task Switch Event

• Wait Program Intermediate Event

• Call & Wait

Independent Subprocess (Callable)

An independent subprocess (callable) is a process, that can be called from any other process with the call subprocess element. Independent subprocesses can be used to factor out frequently used functionality which can then be reused by any other process.

Because callables are independent implementations of processes (or parts of process logic) they have an own Data Class which might not match the caller’s data. Therefore parameters need to be mapped in both directions when entering and leaving an independent subprocess.

To create an independent subprocess, select the callable process option from the New Process Wizard. The created process will contain special start and end elements that must encompass the process implementation.

Web Service Process

Web Service processes are a special case of independent subprocesses. A Web Service process can be started (i.e. called) from any other application (or from another process) by using the Web Service call element or any other SOAP web service compatible client..

A web service process will provide a web service with one or more operations, which are defined by the Web Service Process Start elements within the process. Each of these start elements have their own input and output parameters that will be mapped to and from the process data.

Due to the nature of web services, which are intended to be called by other applications and not by a user directly, no user-interaction (HTML or User Dialogs) is allowed within such a process. If the process does contain user-interaction an exception will be thrown.

To create a web service process, select the Web Service Process option from the New Process Wizard. The created process will contain special start and end elements that must encompass the process implementation.

User Dialog Logic

User Dialog logic processes are the implementation of the behavior of User Dialogs, the controller in the MVC pattern. A whole new set of elements is available for this kind of processes (from the User Dialog drawer on the process editor palette), while other elements (such as task switch or HTML page) are not available for conceptual reasons.

A User Dialog logic process is invoked with an User Dialog element inside a business process. Its execution starts with an init start element and ends with a dialog exit element. The two elements do not need to have a direct connection (in fact they never have). Once a User Dialog process is running, it is driven by user interface events which will trigger individual sub processes.

Note

Calling a process based User Dialog (and thus executing its logic) can (or rather should) be seen as equivalent to calling of a callable process with the sole difference that the User Dialog offers a user interface that allows a user to interact with the process logic directly.

However, from an abstract point of view, a User Dialog is nothing else than a function call. It is invoked with a list of (optional) arguments and returns a list of result values. This is exactly the same behavior as a callable process offers.