Sachith, Workflow is a set of applications configured to work together. User need to define its individual applications and the next step is to create a workflow to configure the applications together. We should not save applications used in the workflow as part of workflow. String saved in workflow is a DAG (Directed acyclic graph) and it has reference to applications (currently services). Other details saved in the workflow are conditional blocks (if, for, while conditions), connections (input-output) and defaults inputs configured by the user. Doing this it will keep the structure of workflow DAG simple and application defined can be used in multiple workflows or run standalone if needed. Please let me know if you have more questions
Thanks Raminder On Jun 5, 2014, at 3:59 AM, Sachith Withana <[email protected]> wrote: > So what you are suggesting is instead of saving a one big string, we should > shred it and store the nodes and their relationships separately so that it > can be queriable? > > But XBaya and the Workflow Interpreter would still be using the string right? > > > On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 9:08 PM, Saminda Wijeratne <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 6:42 AM, Sachith Withana <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 10:23 PM, Saminda Wijeratne <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 1:15 AM, Sachith Withana <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > When designing the Application Catalog for single Applications, I ran into > the issue of supporting workflows in the Application Catalog. > > Should we store the workflows ( workflow files) and keep ids, which would be > the handles for those workflows? > Thanks for bringing this up Sachith. In your opinion how do you think the > workflow should be represented through the CPI? Workflow string or Thrift > object with workflow metadata distinguished or Thrift object with all > workflow data distinguished or any other way? I suppose we need to figure-out > what should be queried in a workflow. > > > For the functional purposes I think it would be better to store the workflow > the way it is right now purely because we wouldn't want this to affect the > Workflow Interpreter behavior. But we can store meta-data about the workflows > to whatever the features we would want to support. Is there a way to get the > applications residing in a workflow without explicitly passing it to get the > meta-data? > Workflow nodes specifically does directly correspond to applications but > service descriptors. The current workflow model object have functions to > return these service descriptors. > > > > We would have to keep track of the applications that are in that workflow so > that the deployment related data would be reused. > > Similarly to the single Applications, the sharing and other features would be > available for the workflows as well. > > Is there any more details that I should be concerned about when implementing > the aforementioned approach? > IMO we can generalize workflows as a composite application with special > properties. For example a workflow could simply be another deployment for an > Application interface. wdyt? > > > I agree. I'll send you the current design I have which generalize this. > > > > If we are planning to add searching capability with the workflows as well, > then we'd have to store the applications that are used in the workflows, > separately in the database as well instead of storing it as a whole. > You mean node information here when you say "applications" right? > > yep. wdyt? > I think it brings us back to whether want to save the workflow as a single > blob or as separate data for the graph. IMO what we send to the registry > should be a complex workflow object and we should be able to query those > objects from the registry based on their properties. How registry saves this > complex object (as a single blob, metadata+single blob or metadata+graph > data) is immaterial for the user of the registry/app catalog. > > > > > Any suggestions/comments on the matter is highly appreciated. > > -- > Thanks, > Sachith Withana > > > > > > -- > Thanks, > Sachith Withana > > > > > > -- > Thanks, > Sachith Withana >
