Introduction to Oracle Business Rules

Modeling Business Processes with Oracle BPM 6-25 flows represent the path your process will take out of these gateways when none of the conditions evaluate to true. Default sequence flows are represented by an arrowed line with a tic mark on one end as shown in Figure 6–29 .

6.7 Controlling Process Flow Using Gateways

This section describes how to use gateways to control process flow and behavior.

6.7.1 Introduction to Gateways

Gateways are flow elements that define the flow of your process. Gateways determine the path a token takes through a process. They define control points within your process by splitting and merging paths. When possible, gateways are used for paths that are exceptions to or deviate from the default path of the process.

6.7.1.1 Split-Merge Pairs

The following gateways require a split-merge pair: ■ Parallel Gateway ■ Inclusive Gateway ■ Complex Gateway When you add one of these gateways to a BPMN process, Oracle BPM Studio automatically creates the split and merge flow objects. Although the merge portion of the gateway is required, you do not have to ensure that all paths out of the split return to the merge. Although it is possible to have process paths that split at a gateway without merging through the gateway, this is not usually good practice. For more details on the merge behavior of gateways, see the following sections for each gateway type.

6.7.2 Introduction to the Exclusive Gateway

The exclusive gateway enables you to split your process into two or more paths. However, the process only continues down one of these paths even if multiple outgoing sequence flows are present. Exclusive gateways can have conditional outgoing sequence flows and must have at least one default outgoing sequence flow. You can define expressions that are used to determine if your process continues down a conditional sequence flow. If your process has multiple outgoing sequence flows for an exclusive gateway, you can define the order in which they are evaluated. The order of evaluation is configured in the properties of the exclusive gateway. If you have an exclusive gateway where more than one conditional evaluates to true, the process will continue down the first conditional sequence flow determined by this order. Unlike other gateways, the exclusive gateway does not require a corresponding merge to be explicitly defined in your process after splitting. Note: If you delete the merge gateway from a process, the corresponding split is also deleted.