Question about Rules Stages

I have a process where the system must complete several very long running processes. In the past, we have created overly complex processes that fail occassionally by calling outside processes and having them raise flags back to BPM.

My thought was that we should incorporate these into Rules Stages and call these processes in the Rules Visual Script. What I understand from the documentation is that this will prevent a time-out since the user will not have to wait for the rules to process. What I don't know is if I can use an Async Task in there, and if the process will continue on (for example down a conditional action) after the rule processing is complete, or would I have to use flags again?

I can build and test this myself, but was hoping to save a little trouble and see if I can get some information here.

Any information or guidance on this would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ryan

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Comments

Jerome_Pearce

To get any feedback from an async task, you definitely are forced to return the data some other way, such as flags (as you suggest).

As for the Business Rules stage, this is an oddity as far as I can see, and they have confused me since their introduction. Like many such things, I have ignored them until informed of their actual use. It is called a 'Business Rule stage', and claims that "allows you to execute a rule in a Business Rules Engine as part of your process". This rule is 'executed' asynchronously.

Well, I've been in the game for a while, and in all my experience, a rule is followed, not executed. That may just be semantics, but if I want my process to adhere to some rule, it must get some feedback from said rule, rather than 'executing' it. I can see no way to return any data or assign values to any variables as the Folder will have moved on its merry way.

Perhaps it is a question of semantics, and I have misunderstood how they work. Perhaps it is a misunderstanding of what a 'Business Rule' is in this situation. In any case, I would dearly like some information on this, but it is scantily documented. Any takers?

Jerome_Pearce

Even more perplexing is the help file. A Rule Stage is described thus:

"A rule can be invoked from a Business Rules Engine". I have no idea what that actually means, or if it is close to correct.

Will the real Rule Stage please stand up....?

rposener

Well from my testing it appears that the entire Visual Script assigned to the Rule property of a Rule Stage does not execute. I tried just having it write a text file, and it never does it. This is quite perplexing to me why Metastorm would even spend the time on a a Stage type that does not seem to do anything.

Would really be nice to hear from someone at Metastorm as to the purpose and maybe even a real example of how this should be used.

rposener

Here is what I have come up with (attached). I wrote a quick Library that provides (relatively) easy usage of the ThreadPool to Queue up Asynchronous operations to be completed in the background. When they complete, it raises a flag back to the folder even providing data if needed.

Would be interested to see other solutions (or poke holes in this solution). We always struggled with this need in 7.6 and we always wrote outside processes to solve this. Perhaps this will offer an alternative to keep it all in the process if nothing else.