Transitions

Transitions can be added to activities and groups in a process. They represent the flow of execution from one activity or group to another.

In TIBCO Business Studio for BusinessWorks, transitions are displayed as an arrow between two resources in a process. Transitions are unidirectional and cannot connect to a previously executed activity or group. The control flow in a process must proceed sequentially, beginning with the starting activity or group and ending with the last activity or group in the process.

Transitions can have a one-to-many relationship with the activities. In a process, one activity can simultaneously transition to multiple activities or groups. For example, if the shipping schedule indicates a delay in shipping an order, you want to notify the customer and enter the information into the customer service system. However, if there is no delay, you want to enter the information into the customer service system without notifying the customer.

Transitions can fall into one of the following categories:
  • Transitions Without Conditions: Control automatically flows from one activity or group to the next without any conditions.
  • Transitions With Conditions: When an activity or group completes processing, conditions specified on the transitions originating from that activity or group are evaluated to determine whether the transition to the next activity or group should be taken or not. All transitions whose conditions are met are taken.
  • Error Transitions: Special transitions that specify the activities or groups to execute in case of an error. When configuring an activity or group, you can select one transition to take from the specified activity or group and the activities or groups to be executed following the error transition.
    Note: Error transitions take precedence over fault handlers. So if an error is encountered in a scope and it has both a fault handler and an error transition, then the fault handler is executed.
Note: See Design-time Concepts for details about the TIBCO Business Studio for BusinessWorks development environment.