Obtaining workflow instance unique ID

[Ramirez, Paul M (388J)]

Hey All,

Thought this might be useful to the larger OODT community.



Hey Rishi,

I talked with Mike about this last week but never got back to him with a 
concrete answer. However, after putting some more thought into it there are 2 
approaches I can think of.

First Approach:
1) Put some type of user generated id in the metadata object that gets into the 
workflow instance metadata
2) Page through the lists of workflow instances that the workflow manager has 
and identify those with your tag. Remember an event can kick off more than one 
workflow.
3) Any that have metadata that match your user generated id are your workflow 
instances you're interested in.

Second Approach:
1) Add a new method to the client and server so that list of workflow instance 
ids is returned

Looking at XmlRpcWorkflowManager.java


    public boolean handleEvent(String eventName, Hashtable metadata)
            throws RepositoryException, EngineException {
        LOG.log(Level.INFO<http://Level.INFO/>, "WorkflowManager: Received 
event: " + eventName);

        List workflows = null;

        try {
            workflows = repo.getWorkflowsForEvent(eventName);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            throw new RepositoryException(
                    "Exception getting workflows associated with event: "
                            + eventName + ": Message: " + e.getMessage());
        }

        if (workflows != null) {
            for (Iterator i = workflows.iterator(); i.hasNext();) {
                Workflow w = (Workflow) i.next();
                LOG.log(Level.INFO<http://Level.INFO/>, "WorkflowManager: 
Workflow " + w.getName()
                        + " retrieved for event " + eventName);

                Metadata m = new Metadata();
                m.addMetadata(metadata);

                try {
                    engine.startWorkflow(w, m); // This returns a workflow 
instance which has an id that could be saved and returned
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                    throw new EngineException(
                            "Engine exception when starting workflow: "
                                    + w.getName() + ": Message: "
                                    + e.getMessage());
                }
            }
            return true;
        } else
            return false;
    }

This should probably be a new method on both the client and server and should 
be supplied as a patch. The method would return either List<String> or 
List<WorkflowInstance> probably the latter but maybe someone else will chime 
in. Of course this would have to have the accompanying client method but it 
shouldn't be that big of an update.

My instincts would say that second approach is probably the way to go.


Thanks,

Paul



On Apr 25, 2011, at 11:39 AM, Verma, Rishi (317I) wrote:


   return ((Boolean) client
                    .execute("workflowmgr.handleEvent", argList))
                    .booleanValue();

Is there a way to obtain and query for a workflow 'instance ID'?

Thanks!
Rishi & Mike