[jboss-dev-forums] [Design of JBoss jBPM] - Re: execution transitions, data flow and other associations

[brittm]

Tom, its my understanding that a Link in BPEL is simply a mechanism that sends a message and waits for a response.  In other words, a wait state with a messaging structure defined.  Of course, that can be used for synchronization purposes.

What we need for sync without merge is something much more defined.  Something that allows processes to 'subscribe' a node to a 'sync group' based on some common variable (like an order number), and then react to various conditions of that group as each participating node is executed.  

Configuration could allow participating nodes to react in different ways to various conditions within the sync group, such as:
* If I'm the first to arrive, take my transition a.
* If I'm not the first, take my transition b.
* If I'm the last to arrive, take my transition c.
* Or when the last participant has arrived, take my transition d.

Done properly, this would allow for dynamic processes in which the definition doesn't need to know ahead of time how many instances (or what type of instances) will be participating in a sync group.  This kind of dynamic behavior is huge.

Probably within the next week or two I'll have something like this implemented orthagonally to jBPM, but of course, like Shared Subprocess, I'd love to see these concepts integrated into the project.

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