Process Instances

A business process is typically a collection of related and structured activities or tasks, that depicts a business use case and produces a specific service or output. For example, a banking customer requesting a bank load and getting loan approval is a simple process. An instance of this process is a specific example of this process workflow. So, Mr. Smith requesting for 50,000 USD and getting approval for it is an instance of the "bank loan approval" process. Every time a banking customer makes a request for a loan, that request triggers a new process instance in the BPM system, which flows through the elements of the process workflow according to its design.

At a particular time, there can be numerous instances of a single process. Follow the instructions below to access process instances.

1. Log in to the management console and select "Business Processes -> Instances" in the "Main" menu.

2. The "Instances Created" window opens.

• Instance ID:
• Process ID:
• Status:
• Date Started:
• Last Active:
• Total Instances:
• Actions:

3. Click on an Instance ID to view "Instance Information". For example,

The following details can be accessed:

Instance Information

Details of the process instance as described above.

Root Scope Information

• Scope ID:
• Scope Name:
• Status:
• Variables:

Activity Information

<To be added>

4. In the "Instances Created" window, click on selected process ID.

5. The "Process Information" window opens. For more information on each section, refer to Deploy and Manage a BPEL Process.

Process Instance Events

WSO2 BPS generates events to facilitate tracking the activities of the engine and produces detailed information about process executions. These events are persisted in BPS's database and can be queried using the BPS Management API. The default behavior of the BPS engine is to generate events for every executed action. However, for better performance, it is recommended to deactivate selected or all events depending on your requirements as these events usually cause a non-negligible overhead in the system.

Event Types

The following table depicts the event types generated by ODE:

The second column specifies whether an event is associated with the process itself or with one of its scopes. The event type is used for filtering events.

Filtering Events

Process-Level Filtering

Using the It is possible to tweak event generation to filtrate which ones get created. First, events can be filtered at the process level using one of the following stanza:

<dd:process-eventsgenerate="all"/>
    <!-- Default configuration -->
    <dd:process-eventsgenerate="none"/>
    <dd:process-events>
        <dd:enable-event>dataHandling</dd:enable-event>
        <dd:enable-event>activityLifecycle</dd:enable-event>
</dd:process-events>

The first form just duplicates the default behavior; when nothing is specified in the deployment descriptor, all events are generated. The third form lets you define which types of events are generated. The possible types are: 

• instanceLifecycle
• activityLifecycle
• dataHandling
• scopeHandling
• correlation

Scope-Level Filtering

It is also possible to define filtering for each scope of the process. This overrides the settings defined in the process. In order to define event filtering on a scope, the scope activity MUST have a name in your process definition. Scopes are referenced by name in the deployment descriptor:

<dd:deployxmlns:dd="http://www.apache.org/ode/schemas/dd/2007/03">
    ...
 <dd:process-eventsgenerate="none">
    <dd:scope-eventsname="aScope">
        <dd:enable-event>dataHandling</bpel:enable-event>
        <dd:enable-event>scopeHandling</bpel:enable-event>
    </dd:scope-events>
    <dd:scope-eventsname="anotherScope">
        <dd:enable-event>activityLifecycle</bpel:enable-event>
    </dd:scope-events>
 </dd:process-events>
    ...
</dd:deploy>

Event Listeners

WSO2 BPS allows to register your own event listeners to analyze all produced events and perform desired actions with them.

To create a listener, simply implement the org.apache.ode.bpel.iapi.BpelEventListener interface. Then add the implementation in the server's classpath ($CARBON_HOME/repository/components/lib) and add a property in bps.xml bye specifying your fully-qualified implementation class name:

<tns:WSO2BPSxmlns:tns="http://wso2.org/bps/config">
  ...
    <tns:EventListeners><tns:listenerclass="org.wso2.bps.samples.eventlistener.CustomEventListener"/></tns:EventListeners>
  ...
</tns:WSO2BPS>

You can try the sample event listener that is shipped with WSO2 BPS by adding the above configuration to the bps.xml and restarting the server. The source of the sample implementation of event listener can be found here.