[jboss-user] [JBoss jBPM] - Re: Can we save custom variables in a ProcessDefinition

[simonbaker]

"kukeltje" wrote : userobject: care to elaboreate? I have no clue why this could be useful? Things that are to generic tend to blur usability and promote abuse. 

There is a lot of practical real-world stuff that goes into delivering and maintaining a system for real customers.  Typically monitoring, tracing, troubleshooting, maintaining are very important.  There are all kinds of information that would be useful to store with a processdefinition, such as the file it was deployed from, comments about it's revision history, who deployed it, etc. that can be displayed for troubleshooting/maintenance reasons.

There is often a lot of information about a task that is of interest: permissible roles, special instructions to users, per cent completion, graph node color, a phone number to call if the work is stalled, etc. that is of interest well after the assignment has taken place.

Of course we can create our own database to store additional information, but why duplicate all that effort?  And why expect the workflow engine designers to imagine all the possible uses of the technology?  A user object, rather than leading to abuse, prevents "creeping featurism" where features are added to solve particular problems that many users don't need.  I think a "user object" property would help jBPM stay lean and mean and discourage "bloating" of the core code.



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