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two-activity processes (or subprocesses) need to be questioned as they will entail
this overhead, which is much more than just “inline” activities. On the other hand, a
very large process, with many activities and long paths that are infrequently used
because of the transition conditions, can impact database size. The process
instance size is influenced by the number of activities, and the instance takes this
database space as long as it exists, although noticeably less in V2.3 than with
earlier releases. See Appendix A, “Factors Influencing the Size of a FlowMark
Data Base” on page 25, which describes some of the fields in a process template
that influence the amount of data stored for each instance and thus the size of the
database.
If you see the need for a one- or two-step process with both steps done by the
same person, or you have a process where most of the instances are ended by a
single person after a step or two, then consider the following idea. Often the
business event that causes a process instance will record that information in a file
or queue that is serviced by a program that creates the process instance. You
could have a “constant” process, an instance for each person, which has the single
step typically done. When the user selects this activity from the work list, the
program does a “get next” from this queue of work and does the task. It then is
designed to fail the exit condition, so that it goes back as ready on the user's work
list.
If a special condition or exception case is determined which requires further
processing, then instead of setting condition data in the output container to have a
larger process continue, it could use an API call to start another process that would
do that additional processing. This concept can eliminate much of the overhead of
creating very many short processes, yet provides the ability to handle more
complex exception conditions, all using the FlowMark work list as a single place to
find the things you need to do. This can also help in reducing the large number of
people being shown a single item (see Chapter 7, “How Many People Do I Assign
to an Activity?” on page 13).
8 FlowMark V2.3 Design Guidelines