How to Create an Organizational Unit

Handling Information in Your Process Design 8-1 8 Handling Information in Your Process Design This chapter describes how to handle the information in your process using data objects and project data objects. It also shows you how to pass that information along the process and how to transform it when necessary. This chapter includes the following sections: ■ Section 8.1, Introduction to Handling Information in Your Process Design ■ Section 8.2, Introduction to Data Objects ■ Section 8.3, Working with Process Data Objects ■ Section 8.4, Introduction to Activity Instance Attributes ■ Section 8.5, Working with Activity Instance Attributes ■ Section 8.6, Introduction to Subprocess Data Objects ■ Section 8.7, Working with Subprocess Data Objects ■ Section 8.8, Introduction to Project Data Objects ■ Section 8.9, Working with Project Data Objects ■ Section 8.10, Introduction to Arguments ■ Section 8.11, Naming Conventions ■ Section 8.12, Scope and Access ■ Section 8.13, Introduction to Data Associations ■ Section 8.14, Introduction to Transformations ■ Section 8.15, Defining Transformations

8.1 Introduction to Handling Information in Your Process Design

Generally processes access and store information. Often the process flow is based on the value of this information. In other cases this information is the result of running the tasks in the process. Oracle BPM supports the following data structures to keep track of this information: ■ Process Data Objects ■ Subprocess Data Objects ■ Project Data Objects ■ Arguments 8-2 Modeling and Implementation Guide for Oracle Business Process Management Additionally, you can pass information between the different elements of a process using data associations. Data associations enable you to pass information map the values of project and process data objects to the input and output arguments of the flow object implementations. You can view the process data objects, project data objects, and business indicators in the Structure Window. Figure 8–1 Show the structure window for a process that defines business indicators and process data objects. Figure 8–1 Structure Window This figure shows the Structure window for a process that defines business indicators and process data objects.

8.1.1 Basic Data Objects versus Complex Data Objects

Basic data objects are data objects defined using the basic types. For example, Int, Bool or String. Complex data objects allow you to group data. Complex data objects are defined using business objects. See Chapter 13, Modeling Business Objects for more information on how to define business objects. Business objects allow you to create data structures based on basic data objects. For example, you can create a complex data object called employee that contains different data types for employee name, id, and salary. The structure of complex data objects is the same for all the process instances of a process. However the data they contain generally varies between the different instances of the process. Figure 8–2 shows the relationship between basic data objects and complex data objects.