On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 11:37:11AM -0700, R Law wrote: > > I've spent several hours reading docs, blog posts, and examples, but > it's conceptually still a long way away. Our app uses state machine- > like rules to track the status of various Active Record models. I > think ruote is a great fit for this app (it's a document review > system--just like the first example process in the docs), but I'm > struggling on how to re-write everything as a workflow engine. > > Our app has a model that keeps track of most of the workflow. When > managers want to see the progress on each document, we query this > model's status. Ruote should work fine as a replacement for nearly all > the statuses, but once a process is finished, how should we query for > documents that are in their final states (either "published" or > "rejected")? Do we have to continue to store these states within the > model? Or do we keep processes running forever?
Hello, there is something ambiguous (for me) in your description. Is the state attached to that separate model or to the document itself ? If you have a model pointing to a business object (like a document) with a state attached to this model, you already have something strong. If the state is attached directly to the business object, it implies the object is only in one state at a time. If the state is attached to an external model, there could be multiple states pointing to the same object. If the state is attached directly to the business object, you could use ruote to switch/swap states when necessary. To know the state of the thing, you simply ask to the object. To know in which process an object is currently involved you could query ruote (or keep tracks of ruote workflow instance ids in the business object). Ruote is more about handing tasks to participants. You hand the task "review" to the participant "Tony" and when he's done, you can incidentally change the state of the document to "reviewed". > Another issue is how to keep track of the histories of each process. > Should that be done separately? There is a HistoryStorage which might be used as is or adapted. https://github.com/jmettraux/ruote/blob/master/lib/ruote/log/storage_history.rb Maybe this search may help http://groups.google.com/group/openwferu-users/search?group=openwferu-users&q=StorageHistory&qt_g=Search+this+group Now it depends if you want to keep the history per object or per process (or both). Maybe don't rush into ruote, after all you already have a working system in place. Try with a small system first. Best regards, -- John Mettraux - http://lambda.io/processi -- you received this message because you are subscribed to the "ruote users" group. to post : send email to [email protected] to unsubscribe : send email to [email protected] more options : http://groups.google.com/group/openwferu-users?hl=en
