Basic workflow support, activities and non modal forms?

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lollisoft
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Basic workflow support, activities and non modal forms?

Post by lollisoft »

Hi,

I am thinking about general implementation of a workflow engine. Basically I am able to execute an activity diagram (UML), as I have a serialized collection of activity steps and transitions. Also some guards are supported by evaluating simple expressions to support a decision activity.

Then the featurelist end. I cannot open a non modal window, as I am unable to wait for that window to close. I cannot stay in the activity, because this will block the application. Alwas using modal dialogs is not an option in the long run.

Were there any attempts made yet to support workflow based applications?

Basically I know, I have to leave a workflow to be persisted in the current state (data + current activity / aka execution position).

For short time I think to keep the instance in memory, put it into pause state and return control to the caller.

How do I know about an open window related to a workflow / activity?

Is the window ID enough to keep track by aggregate the window ID + the workflow / activity instance?

Using the OnIdle event, I'll be able to transfer the aggregate into a database after a while by serializing the workflow / activity data + the current data held by the window instance. So if the application will crash, the state is persisted and could be resumed later.

Any ideas or tips?

Thanks, Lothar
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iwbnwif
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Re: Basic workflow support, activities and non modal forms?

Post by iwbnwif »

Sorry I cannot be much help with your questions.

The only (possibly not at all useful) thought I could have is to look at wxExecute and wxProcess as these allow you to initiate a process and then know when it has been completed. Therefore your workflow could consist of successive calls to sub processes based on your UML.

In case you haven't already discovered it, wxShapeFramework is a great framework for creating diagrams and can be the basis for UML diagrams.
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