Binding issues after transport to production
Carolyn Fuller
fuller at MIT.EDU
Wed Feb 11 20:21:33 EST 2009
Jocelyn,
By the way, I should mention that the only reason I seem to be doing
anything correctly is that "Practical Workflow for SAP" is always near
my side when I touch a workflow! Thank you for helping to write such
an excellent book.
Yikes! I have to digest this new suggestion...
So, first, you are indicating that SWU_OBUF might not solve the
problems we've encountered with bindings in production, correct?
I should mention that the times we've encountered problems have always
been after modifying workflow templates that were originally custom
created under 3.0f as workflow tasks by someone who wasn't a workflow
developer and did some unconventional things. They were converted to
workflow templates under 4.6c in 2000.
The most recent change involved converting an activity step from being
synchronous to being asynchronous. As far as I know I did not delete
any container elements. The problem was encountered when we were doing
production validations on the transported workflow template. So the
workflow instances were all created after the transport. None of them
were old instances. In fact, we told our community of users that they
needed to clear out all their workflows before the transport because
the old workflow wasn't going to work if it needed to go through the
new asynchronous step. The specific binding that caused us problems
was the binding to the new terminating event.
Now the future...
Changes to these same workflow templates are planned for production
next month.
I've just finished significant changes to a complex workflow template
in our development environment and, what I thought, was a minor change
to another workflow template that is a subworkflow to a subworkflow to
the first. Everything is working perfectly in our development
environment. I haven't moved this transport to QA yet.
Should I copy these workflow templates into 3 new workflow templates
instead?
Carolyn
On Feb 11, 2009, at 7:25 PM, Dart, Jocelyn wrote:
> Carolyn,
>
> You do have to be cognisant that not everything in a workflow is
> version
> dependent - particularly the workflow container. So if you are
> already
> generating versions and doing the other stuff correctly as you seem to
> be doing, you need to think about how you are approaching changes to
> the
> container in particular and any other non-version-dependent areas such
> as event linkage.
>
> In particular you should not delete container elements that are no
> longer to be used - better to change their description to "Do Not Use"
>
> Also if you have change the structure underlying a container element
> you
> may need to be careful. If possible, it might be worth considering
> creating a new container element.
>
> If your changes are significant you should also consider the option of
> creating a new workflow template and retiring the old workflow
> template
> by deactivating the event linkage to the old template - this will
> still
> let old instances run through to completion.
>
> Hope that helps in your thinking...
>
> Regards,
> Jocelyn
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sap-wug-bounces at MIT.EDU [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at MIT.EDU] On
> Behalf
> Of Carolyn Fuller
> Sent: Thursday, 12 February 2009 11:10 AM
> To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
> Subject: Re: Binding issues after transport to production
>
> Jocelyn,
>
> I do generate version before modifying the workflows in development.
>
> We do our production validations on workflow transports before
> midnight.
>
> I take this to mean that if a workflow's binding is working properly
> in our QA environment, then SWU_OBUF should clear up any binding
> issues after a transport to production?
>
> Carolyn
> On Feb 11, 2009, at 5:55 PM, Dart, Jocelyn wrote:
>
>> Hi Carolyn,
>>
>> A) Please STOP DOING THAT! You are just asking for trouble...
>>
>> B) Yes - run SWU_OBUF after transports ***** OR **** make sure you
>> transports go in before midnight system time - as the relevant
>> buffers
>> will be automatically refreshed at that time.
>>
>> C) Even better, when you are modifying workflows make sure you
>> GENERATE
>> VERSION before modifying - this keeps changes in the new version of
>> the
>> workflow separate from the old version to minimize possible
>> conflicts,
>> allowing existing workflows to continue using the old version, while
>> new
>> instances use the new version.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Jocelyn
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On
>> Behalf
>> Of Alon Raskin
>> Sent: Thursday, 12 February 2009 8:16 AM
>> To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
>> Subject: RE: Binding issues after transport to production
>>
>> Just to clarify, you are modifying the workflows directly in the
>> production system?
>>
>> Alon Raskin
>> e: araskin at 3i-consulting.com
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On
>> Behalf
>> Of Carolyn Fuller
>> Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 2:17 PM
>> To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
>> Subject: Binding issues after transport to production
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> On a couple of occasions I've moved modified workflows from our
>> development environment to our QA environment with no problems only
>> to
>> encounter binding issues in production. On these occasions, deleting
>> the bindings in production and re-creating them in production has
>> solved the problem.
>>
>> Are these issues due to the fact that I didn't run SWU_OBUF after the
>> transports went in? Should SWU_OBUF be on our action log when
>> modified
>> workflows go into production?
>>
>> ---
>> Carolyn Fuller
>> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>> Information Services and Technology
>> Administrative Computing
>> Senior Analyst/ Programmer
>> (617) 253-6213
>> http://fuller.mit.edu/
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
> ---
> Carolyn Fuller
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> Information Services and Technology
> Administrative Computing
> Senior Analyst/ Programmer
> (617) 253-6213
> http://fuller.mit.edu/
>
> _______________________________________________
> SAP-WUG mailing list
> SAP-WUG at mit.edu
> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/sap-wug
>
> _______________________________________________
> SAP-WUG mailing list
> SAP-WUG at mit.edu
> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/sap-wug
---
Carolyn Fuller
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Information Services and Technology
Administrative Computing
Senior Analyst/ Programmer
(617) 253-6213
http://fuller.mit.edu/
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