[jboss-dev-forums] [Design of JBoss jBPM] - Re: various questions

[brittm]

anonymous wrote : After all, users might think of a process instance as a "ticket" or a "request" or an "order", rather than as a process instance. 
That's really my point.  Those business concepts are established prior to defining the process defs that serve them.  By allowing the developer to specify a business entity /context for the key via jpdl, then the business entity that the process/execution is intended to represent is clear (and quickly and easily queryable).

In the scenario I'm proposing, a keyable business concept is represented by one or more processes (definitions) --duh.  The defs specify the concept or entity type they represent, and their executions reference the business key.  The 'type' and 'key' together provide the necessary business context.

To put it differently--The question is whether the business context (keyed entity representation) should be derived from the process name, some user table, or up front by configuration.  If context is derived from the process name, the developer has to implement plumbing to map potentially several process names back to a business concept--and he has to do it everywhere--UI resource bundles, every imaginable report, etc.  However, if business context is provided in process config the developer only has to specify it once--now the domain relationship is established.

If an 'order' is only ever represented by a single parent 'order' process, then none of this is a big deal.  However, if an 'order' can result in the execution of a 'New Customer Order', or a 'Change Order', or a 'Move Service Order', or a 'Cancel Service Order' process being started, then it becomes an issue, because all of these separate processes are probably still 'just an order' as far as business keys go.

If my thinking is off base here, or too narrow, somebody slap me back on track :)

-Britt

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