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Call Process

Activity

The Call Process activity calls and executes an existing process definition. The input to the called process is defined in the Start activity of the called process. The output of the called process is defined in the End activity of the called process. See the description of the Start and End activities in TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Process Design for more information about specifying the input and output of a process.

You should only call processes that have Start activities. Do not call processes that begin with a process starter such as HTTP Receiver or Receive Mail. Providing the name of a process with a process starter results in an exception at run time.

Configuration

The Configuration tab has the following fields.

Field	Description
Name	The name to appear as the label for the activity in the process definition.
Description	Short description of the activity.
Process Name	The process definition you would like to call. You can browse the available process definitions.
Process Name Dynamic Override	An XPath formula specifying the name of the process to call. Use this field to dynamically determine which process to call when the process instance is running. See Dynamically Determining the Process to Call for more information about this field.
Spawn	Specifies whether to spawn a new machine process for executing the called process. If this option is checked, the parent process cannot access the called process’ output. The called process is executed in a separate process instance.
Custom Id	This field is only available when the Spawn field is checked. This field can contain an XPath expression that specifies a custom ID for the spawned process instance. This ID is displayed in the View Service dialog of TIBCO Administrator, and it is also available in the $_processContext process variable in the spawned process instance.
Custom Icon File	File to use for the Call Process activity in the process definition. This allows you to customize the look of your process definition with your own images.

Dynamically Determining the Process to Call

You can use the Process Name Dynamic Override field on the Configuration tab to specify an XPath expression that determines which process to call. This is useful for calling a different process depending upon the value of the XPath expression. For example, you have an incoming HTTP request that contains an attribute named orderAmount. For all incoming orders over $10,000, you want to call a process that includes activities in the Manual Work palette to obtain the proper approvals. For orders under $10,000, you want to call a process that handles the order automatically. You can create the following expression that resolves to the proper process name for each type of order:

 

if($IncomingOrder/orderAmount > 10000) then

           ’/MyProject/manualApproval.process’

      else ’/MyProject/processOrder.process’

Use the full path and name of the process file as stored in the project directory.

When you use the Process Name Dynamic Override field, you must also specify a process to call in the Process field. The input, output, and error definitions of the specified process must be the same as any process that the expression in the Process Name Dynamic Override field can evaluate to.

It may be helpful to create process definitions that act as programmatic interfaces when using the Process Name Dynamic Override field. In the example above, you may create a process named orderProcessOrApprove. The only purpose of this process is for specifying the input, output, and error schemas. Place this process in the Process field of the Call Process tab. Then, create the manualApproval and processOrder process definitions as copies of the orderProcessOrApprove process. The Call Process activity then has the correct input, output, and error schemas for all processes that can be called.

If you use the Process Name Dynamic Override field, make sure you include all potentially callable subprocesses when you create your Process Archive for deployment. TIBCO Designer cannot determine which subprocesses are potentially callable at design time, and therefore they cannot be automatically included in a process archive. See TIBCO Designer User’s Guide for more information about creating process archives.

Input

See TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Process Design for more information about mapping and transforming input data.

The input for the activity is the following.

Input Item	Datatype	Description
input	varies	The input to the called process is defined by the Output Editor tab in the called process’ Start activity. See TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Process Design for more information.

Output

The output for the activity is the following.

Output Item	Datatype	Description
output	varies	The output of the called process is defined by the Input Editor tab in the called process’ End activity. See TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Process Design for more information.

Copyright © Cloud Software Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved