Data Type Support
TIBCO BPM Enterprise supports two main types of data (basic data or business data) in processes.
- Basic data - simple data types such as text, number, boolean, date and time.
- Business data - structured data that contains information about real-world entities that an organization deals with, for example, Customer, Order, Orderline. Each of these entities will have a number of attributes for example, name, address, date. These objects are also connected to each other in different relationships and with different multiplicities.
Business data can also include derived types, which are derived from basic types. For example, an index type that can only contain positive integers in the range 10 to 20.
- Case data - business data that is centrally managed and can therefore be accessed and updated by multiple BPM process applications. Case data is modeled at design-time as case classes in a case data model, then represented at runtime as case objects, which can be referenced by corresponding case references.
Arrays of basic and business types are also supported.
At design time, these data types can be used in the process design. Example:
- fields and parameters in processes and forms
- in scripts
- input or output parameters on service tasks.
See the TIBCO Business Studio - BPM Edition Modeling Guide for more information.
At runtime, business data objects are managed and stored locally by TIBCO BPM Enterprise. (Business data objects are propagated through the system as copies - they are not passed by reference.)