Filter
Top Products
Appendix A. Factors Influencing the Size of a FlowMark Data
Base
When you design your process in FlowMark Buildtime, you create a process model.
You then translate this model and create a process template. This is a bit like
compiling a program. The template contains the rules and other information
necessary to run an instance of the process. You will likely have many instances
of each process template active in FlowMark at any point in time. While all
instances that were started with a particular template will use that one single
template (it is not duplicated), there is a certain amount of information in the
database for each unique instance. Some is there because it can be altered by the
user, and some is there based on things happening dynamically as each instance
follows its particular path through the process template.
Since these things will influence the size of your database, it may help to
understand what some of them are. You will see that many have already been
mentioned throughout this redbook.
A.1 Activity Name and Description
While you may think of these two items as fixed, since you specify them when you
define the process, they are actually dynamic (or can be), so copies are kept for
each instance.
If you provide a description of the activity on the general page of the activity
notebook, you can include in it the contents of variables from the input data
container. This is often done because it helps convey information from previous
activities directly to users' work lists, helping them understand more about the
activity or instance, and allowing them to better choose which activity to work on.
Users can alter both the activity name and the description. They do this from their
work list, selecting the activity and its settings and then going to the General page
of the notebook. They might do this to make note of something that kept them
from completing the activity or to pass information on to others who have that
activity on their work list as well.
The point is that for each activity in each instance, copies of the activity name and
description are kept in the database. The bigger you make these (and description
can be up to 1024 characters), the more space will be taken in the data base.
Remember the guideline that it is important to understand how many times
something occurs. To take an extreme example, if you filled all 1024 characters in
the description of every one of 50 activities in a process and then had 2000
instances in the database, how much space is that?
124 ᑍ 5 ᑍ 2 = 1, KB
And that does not count what FlowMark and the database would require just to
keep track of it. As always, use the function when it helps you, but do not misuse
it. Constant information is better put on the Documentation page of the activity
notebook. Only one copy is kept of that, in the translated template, no matter how
many instances.
Copyright IBM Corp. 1996, 1998 25