WHAT DOES ORACLE WORKFLOW COMPRISE OF?

WHAT DOES ORACLE WORKFLOW COMPRISE OF?

Processes (Item Types)
Item Type: A grouping of workflow components. All components of a workflow process must be associated with a specific item type. A set of rules which determine how the business methodology is to be routed.

Item Type : A grouping of all items of a category that share the same set of attributes For e.g.: PO Requisition is an Item Type used to group all PO requisitions created. It is like say Class in Java

Item : A specific process or transaction managed by WF process. Like instance of a class is Object.A specific run of Leave request Process will be reffered to as Item.

Attributes : These are the various input or output variables that are needed by the business process.Text,Attribute ,Date ,URL,Number,Lookup,Form are some of the attribute types.Lookup

Type: List of values that can be referenced by any component.

Activities : An activity is a unit of work that contributes toward the accomplishment of a process. An activity can be a notification, a function, an event, or a process. These are the actions performed during the business process

Function Activity: Automated unit of work defined as a PL/SQL stored procedure.

Notification Activity: Activity that sends a message to a performer.

Node : An instance of an activity in a process diagram.

Notification : An instance of a message delivered to a user.

Message: The message may request the performer, the role receiving the message, to do some work or may simply provide information. Each notification carries a message with it which is the actual text of the notification.

Performer : A user/role assigned to perform a particular (human) activity. Generally, assigned to a notification.

Role : One or more users grouped by a common responsibility or position.

Lookup type :A predefined list of values used to interact with users or define the results of an
activity.

Lookup Code : An internal name of a value defined in lookup type.

Result Type :The name of the lookup type that contains an activity’s possible result values.

Timeout : The amount of time during which a notification activity must be performed before the WF engine transitions to an alternate activity (if defined) or error process.

Transition:The relationship between completion of one activity and initialization of another activity. (Arrows)

Access Level : A numeric value ranging from 0 – 1000 defining at which level the user operates and whether user can modify the workflow definition.

Protection Level :A numeric value ranging from 0 – 1000 that represents who the workflow definition is protected from for modification
Access levels and Protection levels work in collaboration to decide who can modify what in an Oracle Workflow.

Process Activity : A Process activity represents a collection of activities in relationship. When a Process Activity is contained in another process it is called a sub-process.In other words, activities in a process can also be process themselves.

PERSISTENCE TYPE : Permanent , Temporary and Synchronous
When you define an item type, you must also specify its persistence type.The persistence type controls how long a status audit trail is maintained for each instance of the item type.
· If you set Persistence to Permanent, the runtime status information indifinitely until you specifically purge the information by calling the procedure WF_PURGE.TotalPerm().
· If you set an item type's Persistence to Temporary, you must also specify the number of days of persistence.The status audit trail for each instance of a temporary item type is maintained for at least 'n' days of persistence after its completion date.After the 'n' days of persistence, you can then use any of the WF_PURGE API's to purge the item type's runtime status information.

EVENTS : A business event is an occurrence in an internet or intranet application or program thay might be to other objects in a system or to external agents. For instance, the creation of a purchase order is an example of a business event in a purchasing application.You can define your significant events in the Event manager.

· The Workflow Engine traps errors produced by function activities by setting a savepoint before each function .If an activity produces an unhandled exception, the engine performs a rollback to the savepoint, and sets the activity to the ERROR status.The Workflow Engine never issues a commit as it is the responsibility of the calling application to commit.