BPEL - abnormal end of process

[adrian.andrei]

I have a BPEL process that use to end abnormally, somewhere in the middle of a sequence and no reason (or exception) was logged - I can see just the process end event there.

The use case is:
- have a global message type variable, store the response of some invoke activity (the message is multi-part, each is a string)
- after an unrelated reply activity try to access a property part using bpel:getVariableData

You will notice in log file how end process event is sent immediately after assign (even though there a lot of activities that follow).

Sometimes, you may even have an exception logged, but when is not, it is very disturbing to see your process end without a cause - it takes a huge amount of time to debug.

How do I know that is the cause? Simple, immediately after the first invoke, store the message part in a type variable and use that instead later on. The process ends successfully.

Please let me know if you want more details, but I cannot share the BPEL code with you.

Regards,
AA

[aguizar]

Martin Steinle found a similar problem and posted his BPEL code in topic "Unexpected process end in the mid of a bpel". Does that look like your own process?

[adrian.andrei]

Yeah, I responded to the posting with the solution I used. Exactly the same.

If you put the second assign in a while loop you have a very "nice" stack trace (instead of end process event)

Regards,
AA

[adrian.andrei]

I think I know what that is: the Hibernate session is closed, on finalize I suspect, and the message gets lost. The session is closed upon reply, and the gc kicks in sometimes after that.

[aguizar]

So how does copying the message part to a temporary variable make things different?

[adrian.andrei]

Sorry, I meant jPBM session.

I have no time for code-digging. I just noticed that errors like that happens immediately after jBPM session that was used to receive the request closes.

I bet that in the context instance the message variables are somehow linked with the session but i have no time to check (issue is not critical).

Alex, let me know your opinon though.

[aguizar]

If the session is somehow being closed ahead of time, that would also explain the invalid transaction ID that appears at random.
I appreciate your insight into this issue. Now I know at least where to start.