BPM 9 Hints & Tips: Raising Flags with less pain

Jerome_Pearce

Flags in Metastorm BPM 9 are slightly different that previous versions. One major advantage is that the parameters are well defined and strongly typed.

The real problem we have, however, is that because of this strong typing, and the way Metastorm have created the flag raising mechanism, we are stuffed if we change the parameters for a flag. Basically, every single instance where the flag is raised is instantly broken, and needs replacing. Worse, you have to replace all the parameters, not just add the new one.

An alternative is to use the generic flag raising activity and pass in an array of parameters. The trouble with that is that you lose the strong typing, and you get no warning if you forget a parameter or get one wrong. It may even break the flag action at run time, which is worse. In addition, you get no warning for every instance so you cannot be sure you have changed all instances where the flag is raised.

So what can we do? Well, there is a third way, and it works much better for us: Read more here...