Re: OSWorkflow - initial actionforsteps?

You are right about the risk of additional complexity. However, adding a 
rule engine on top of OSWF (as sugested by Pat) adds a lot more complexity.
I see the "auto"-action feature as improvement toward rule engine, which 
might be added later. So, yes - you have to know what you do if you set 
"auto=yes" for actions, but you don't have to study the rule engine 
features just to get actions performed automatically.

Right now actions have to have unique ids - a rule which has to be 
respected by the person implementing the workflow definition. The 
auto-action feature adds just one more rule: If there is more than one 
valid action with"auto=yes", then the one with the lowest action id gets 
executed. If would say that the power this feature adds to OSWF far 
outweights the risk of using the attribute in a wrong context.

Following the mailing list for 7 months and playing with the example I 
was not even aware that there are only manual actions.
Whenever you have an environment with mixed computer-human-processing 
you need kind of a auto-action feature. For the project I'm involved 
with we need it even within days ... . Whatever comes out of this 
discussion will help to find a solution, which fits into the current 
OSWF but makes it more powerful. This is not theory - it's what's needed 
in real-life.

Axel


Hani Suleiman wrote:

> I don't agree with this, making it so that the first match is what's 
> done seems an arbitrary solution, and is bound to confuse a lot of 
> people....'I set my action to auto and I'm sure its condition passes, 
> but it doesn't get called..help!'
>
> On Friday, May 9, 2003, at 03:44 AM, Hubert Felber wrote:
>
>>
>> <I don't understand how "auto=yes" would cause actions to be invoked?
>> Would
>> <they just happen once the step that has that action is entered in the
>> <workflow? What if there are two actions with auto=yes?
>>
>> Just some thoughts:
>>
>> Actions with "auto=yes" are are called every time a transition to that
>> step is made. It's the programmers responsability to use restrictions
>> that control execution of "auto" actions.
>>
>> <What happens if two conditions evaluate to true? Do you have a split?
>>
>> Same as for conditional-results, only the first "auto" action with
>> restrictions that are fullfilled, is executed. Splits always must be
>> defined in results.
>>
>> Does that make sense?
>>
>> Hubert
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> "Pat Lightbody" <[email protected]> 05/09/03 03:24am >>>
>>>>
>>
>>> <but does it make sense to "auto"-call more than one action?
>>>
>>> You could have auto actions with different conditions.
>>>
>>> Hubert
>>
>>
>> What happens if two conditions evaluate to true? Do you have a split?
>>
>> -Pat
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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