How to manage business data

In a business application information need to be managed and distributed in a predefined way. Users edit data, which need to be made available for various actors. Back-end applications need the data to track the status or trigger different events. The data which is processed by a workflow management system is stored into a database and synchronized with a business process. This data is called the ‘workitem’.

The data, which is usually edited by a user or controlled by an application is called the ‘business data’. The Data which is managed by the workflow system is called the ‘workflow data’. The workflow data contains all information about the current state of a ‘process instance’. So a workitem holds business data, entered by a user or controlled by an application, and also processing information controlled by the workflow system.

Business data

To manage the data of a workitem, the Imixs Workflow project provides the simple data object - called ItemCollection. A ItemCollection contains a list of items that can store any type of data. There are no restrictions in the amount or size of the data stored into an ItemCollection. See the following example how to use the ItemCollection object:

import org.imixs.workflow.ItemCollection;
.....
ItemCollection workitem=new ItemCollection();
workitem.replaceItemValue("name","Anna");
workitem.replaceItemValue("age",new Integer(32));

Each item stored into a ItemCollection has a item-name and a item-value. The item-name identifies a specific part of data contained in a ItemCollection. You can access a item-value by its name:

....
String name=workitem.getItemValueString("name");
int age=workitem.getItemValueInteger("age");
....

Workflow data

As explained before, a workitem can not only contain business data, but also information about the process instance which is controlled by the workflow system. This workflow data of a process instance contains for example data like the creation date or the processing status. This is an example how to access this kind of data:

String uniqueID=workitem.getItemValueInteger("$UniqueID");
int processID=workitem.getItemValueInteger("$ProcessID");
Date created=workitem.getItemValueDate("$created");
Date modified=workitem.getItemValueDate("$modified");
String status=workitem.getItemValueString("txtWorkflowStatus");
Vector history=workitem.getItemValue("txtWorkflowHistory");

The following table provides an overview about the data of a process instance managed by the Imixs-Workflow Engine. The column ‘read/write’ indicates if the property can be controlled by an application:

Property Type read/write Description
$ModelVersion String yes The Version of the model the workitem belongs to
$ProcessID Integer yes The current ProcessID of the workItem
$ActivityID Integer yes The next activity to be processed by the workflow engine
$Created Date no Date of creation
$Modified Date no Date of last modification
$IsAuthor Boolean no Indicates if the current user has write access
$ReadAccess List no String list of User/Roles with read access
$WriteAccess List no String list of User/Roles with write access
$uniqueId String no The unique ID of this workItem
$uniqueIdRef String yes A reference to a connected workItem (child process)
$workitemid String no The process instance id of this workitem
namcreator String no The user who created the workItem.
namCurrentEditor String no The user who invoked the processWorkitem() method.
namOwner List no String list of User/Roles, that are owners of that WorkItem.
txtworkflowgroup String no The name of the current process group
txtworkflowstatus String no The name of the current workflow status
txtworkflowsummary String no A short description of the current status
txtworkflowabstract String no A long description of the current status
txtworkflowimageurl String no A link to an image which displays the current status
txtworkflowhistorylog List no History of all processed activities
txtworkflowresultmessage String no The result message of last process step
txtworkflowactivitylog List no Log of processed workflow activities
txtworkflowpluginlog List no The plugin execution log
timworkflowlastaccess Date no The timestamp of the last processing action
numlastactivityid Integer no The last processed workflow activity ID
namlasteditor String no The last user, that invoked the process method