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Breakpoints

Breakpoints allow you to suspend a running process instance at a specified point so that you can examine the process data. Breakpoints persist after you close your project — the breakpoints you set should appear in the process definition once the project is reopened.

You can set breakpoints before or after an activity executes. The only exceptions to this are that you cannot set a breakpoint before the starting activity or after the End activity. You can also specify that each breakpoint should only occur based on a given condition. Conditions are specified in XPath, just like conditions for items in an activity’s input.

To set a breakpoint, click the Set Breakpoint button and the Set Breakpoint dialog appears. The dialog allows you to select where to place a breakpoint relative to any of the activities in the current process definition. Figure 69 illustrates an example of the Set Breakpoint dialog.

Figure 69 Set BreakPoints dialog

You can choose to select all of the activities by clicking the Select All button. You can clear all set breakpoints by clicking the Clear All button.

You can also set or clear breakpoints on individual activities by right-clicking on the activity and choosing Set/Clear BreakPoint Before/After from the popup menu. Using the popup menu on the activity only sets the specified breakpoint. You must use the Set Breakpoint dialog if you wish to specify a condition for the breakpoint.

When a breakpoint is set on an activity, a red octagon (a stop sign) appears next to the task’s icon to indicate the task has a breakpoint. A breakpoint before the activity appears to the top left of the activity. A breakpoint after the activity appears to the top right of the activity. Figure 70 illustrates a process diagram that has breakpoints set before and after two activities.

Figure 70 Setting a breakpoint

When a process instance is stopped at a breakpoint, the breakpoint icon becomes a stop sign inside a yellow triangle to indicate where the process instance has stopped. Figure 71 illustrates the example process definition when the process instance is stopped at the breakpoint before the ReadFile activity.

Figure 71 Process instance stopped at a breakpoint

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