Editing a current process definition in Activiti

Question

Whenever I need to make a change in the process definition I have to re deploy the process definition.It seems that creates a new version of the process definition.

Is there a way where I can update the existing process definition and not create a new version all the time.

What will happen to the old process instances if there is a new version of process definition in place.

Any help on the above queries is appreciated.

Answer 1

I don't think the Activiti API provides a way to replace an existing process definition without deploying a new version.

When you deploy a new version of a process, any existing process instances on the old version continue running on the old version.

However, there is a SetProcessDefinitionVersionCmd class you can use to change the process version on a process instance. It's not "smart", though; it simply changes the version number, and doesn't change any other runtime data, so it can break process instances if you make an incompatible change in the process definition.

Answer 2

As matts said, you can use org.activiti.engine.impl.cmd.SetProcessDefinitionVersionCmd.

Following code is to update latest process definition id.

String PROCESS_DEFINITION_NAME = processdefID; 
DesEncrypter de = new DesEncrypter();
String password = "yourpwd";

ProcessEngineConfiguration cfg = new StandaloneProcessEngineConfiguration()
 .setJdbcUrl("database.url")
 .setJdbcUsername("database.username").setJdbcPassword("database.password")
 .setJdbcDriver("database.driver")
 .setDatabaseSchemaUpdate(ProcessEngineConfiguration.DB_SCHEMA_UPDATE_FALSE);

ProcessEngine processEngine = cfg.buildProcessEngine();
RepositoryService repositoryService = processEngine.getRepositoryService();
RuntimeService runtimeService = processEngine.getRuntimeService();

ProcessDefinition processDefinition = repositoryService.createProcessDefinitionQuery().latestVersion()
 .processDefinitionKey(PROCESS_DEFINITION_NAME).singleResult();

if (processDefinition == null) {
 System.out.println("Cannot find Process Def ID " + PROCESS_DEFINITION_NAME);
} else {
 System.out.println("Latest Process Definition Version: " + processDefinition.getVersion());
 long counter = runtimeService.createProcessInstanceQuery().active()
  .processDefinitionKey(PROCESS_DEFINITION_NAME).count();
 List < ProcessInstance > processInstanceList = runtimeService.createProcessInstanceQuery().active()
  .processDefinitionKey(PROCESS_DEFINITION_NAME).list();

 System.out.println(counter);

 System.out.println("Total process instances: " + counter);
 System.out.println("Total process instances retrieved: " + processInstanceList.size());

 int index = 1;
 for (ProcessInstance oneInstance: processInstanceList) {
  try {
   CommandConfig commandConfig = new CommandConfig();
   // Execute the command asynchronously to prevent that
   // one error updating a process instance stops the
   // entire batch
   cfg.getAsyncExecutor().getProcessEngineConfiguration().getCommandExecutor()
    .execute(commandConfig.transactionNotSupported(), new SetProcessDefinitionVersionCmd(
     oneInstance.getId(), processDefinition.getVersion()));
   System.out.println(index++ + " - Process instance UPDATED: " + oneInstance.getId() +
    ", previous definition ID: " + oneInstance.getProcessDefinitionVersion());

  } catch (Exception e) {
   System.out.println(index++ + " - Process instance FAILED: " + oneInstance.getId() +
    ", previous definition ID: " + oneInstance.getProcessDefinitionVersion() +
    ",  Cause: " + e.getMessage());
  }
 }

 System.out.println("********* Completed Successfully. *********");
 System.in.read();

}