7 Replies Latest reply on Dec 16, 2005 8:00 PM by anant

    Prioritization

    anant

      I was wondering if jBPM supported prioritization within a workflow. I know tasks can have priorities, but those are controlled by an actor. I am looking for something along the lines of prioritization of tokens, or something that manages priorities without user intervention. If this is not available right now, are there any plans to add this feature in the future?

      Thanks.

        • 1. Re: Prioritization
          kukeltje

          Priorities are not neccesarily controled by an actor. They can be set anywhere by any code. Is that what you need?

          • 2. Re: Prioritization
            ashkumar

            based on my understanding of the problem, there is a very simple solution to it. You just want to assign priority to taskinstances for a particular user. They way to do this would be assign variable called priority for that taskinstance. This variable will be persisted in the jbpm database and will enumerate the priority for that particular taskinstance.

            Regards,

            • 3. Re: Prioritization
              anant

              I don't want a priority associated with any user, but for processes that are travelling through the system from node to node. I am not using tasks at all. Is there still a way to use priorities?

              • 4. Re: Prioritization
                ralfoeldi

                Hi 'anant',

                just what would these priorities effect?

                The execution of Tokens is deterministic. Either triggered by external events, by Timer execution or something else. Once these are executed the workflow proceeds till the signaled token has reached a wait state - it then waits for external input.

                Exactly when should / could priorities decide / influence what Token to execute?

                Greetings

                Rainer

                • 5. Re: Prioritization
                  sforema

                  I agree with Rainer.

                  jBPM is just a workflow engine. It does not prioritize the execution/speed of tasks.

                  This would be something you would do outside jBPM.

                  My first job was a mainframe job (shhhh!). When you submited work to the mainframe/CPU, you submitted a list of things you want to perform in something called JCL, which could be thought of as "similar" to jBPM. This was put into a queue. This queue could be given CPU/processing priority, but the JCL itself was affected.

                  What I'm saying is that it isn't the worklow engine's job to do this, but it is possible to do it outside of it, but I doubt you would want to go to that amount of work...

                  Sean

                  • 6. Re: Prioritization
                    ashkumar

                    Sounds like you need a rule engine and not a workflow engine.

                    • 7. Re: Prioritization
                      anant

                      That's what I was afraid of. Looks like we'll have to implement it ourselves.

                      Thanks for the info.