Workflow Parallel Steps

[Soady, Phil]

This is not a ood way to design stable parallel processes in terms of variable access. Don't use globals unless they cope with such access.
Use local containers (tasks) or multilines with 1 per parallel branch.
Parallel means, can occurs at the same time, so the behaviour you describe is expected.
 
Phil Soady
Senior Consultant
Business Technologies
SAP Australia
M  +61 (0) 412 213 079
E  phil.soady at sap.com
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: SAP Workflow [mailto:Owner-SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU] On Behalf Of Trant, David
Sent: Thursday,27 May 2004 2:28 AM
To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Workflow Parallel Steps
 
Sorry for the delay in responding; I think I posted something similar here a few months back and can tell you definitively that the order in which parallel tasks executes is completely indeterminate.  I had a situation where someone designed a parallel branch, and ended up referencing the same container element in both branches.  Each side of the branch had a step that populated that container element, followed by a step that used its value.  As you can imagine, the workflow behaved fine when the order of execution was "Branch A, Step 1" followed by "Branch A, Step 2" followed by "Branch B Step 1" and finally "Branch B Step 2," but behaved rather badly when the order was "Branch A, Step 1, Branch B Step 1, Branch A Step 2 and lastly Branch B Step 2."  Both branches in that case ended using the value found by Branch B, which was not the desired result.
 
 -----Original Message-----
From:   SAP Workflow [mailto:Owner-SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU]
Sent:   Tuesday, May 25, 2004 9:05 AM
To:     SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject:        Re: Workflow Parallel Steps
 
Thanks Mike,
 
I will probably be doing some testing on this in the next week or so, so I will let you know what I find.
 
Regards,
 
Alon
 
________________________________
 
From: SAP Workflow on behalf of Michael Pokraka
Sent: Tue 25/05/2004 14:53
To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Workflow Parallel Steps
 
 
 
Hi Alon,
'Off the top' I've learnt not to rely on things to happen at the time you
expect them to happen. More logically, since a task can be anything from a
container operation or an asynch RFC call - the latter definitely occupies
it's own process, so I'm pretty convinced that it executes in seperate
processes.
Based on pure speculation, I'd say steps are added to a table, and the WF
engine would probably read that and dispatch the tasks off into their own
process - near enough to simultaneous but not enough to absolutely rely on.
Would be interesting to find out if that is the case though.
 
Cheers
Mike
 
Alon Raskin wrote:
> Hi Richard,
>
> I probably will do that but I wanted to know if anyone knew 'off the top' of
> their heads. The scenario is a little more complex then you describe but its
> not worth going into....
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Alon
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
>> From: SAP Workflow on behalf of Richard Marut
> Sent: Tue 25/05/2004 14:32
> To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: Re: Workflow Parallel Steps
>
>
>
> Alon,
>
> How about if you turn on the technical trace and look at the execution time
> of the results? Or, get basis involved to watch what's happening.
>
> I'm assuming that each branch will contain a task that results in a work
> item being sent to someone which ultimately put those steps into a wait
> state and the odds of two different people processing them at the same time
> would be minimal.
>
> Richard...
>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: SAP Workflow [mailto:Owner-SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU] On Behalf Of Alon
> Raskin
> Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 8:12 AM
> To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: Workflow Parallel Steps
>
> Hi Guys,
>
> Just some questions about Workflow Parallel steps:
>
> 1. Does the Workflow engine guarantee that two parallel branches are
> executed in parallel? What if there are not enough system resources to do
> this? Does it wait for enough to become available?
>
> 2. If two branches are executed in parallel (via the use of a fork), does
> each branch utilise a seperate batch/dialog process?
>
> Regards,
>
> Alon
>
>
 
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