| A long-running process
is one that executes over time. An example of a long-running process
is an order management process in which a product that is ordered
might have to be built from parts that are in inventory. Some
of these parts might even be temporarily out of stock. The entire
business process might take weeks or months to complete before
the product is shipped.
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In contrast, a short-term
business process typically completes almost instantaneously. For
example, when a customer withdraws money from a bank account,
the debiting of the account is immediately followed by the delivery
of the money.
The difference between short and long running
processes is very important to process
automation and business
process management platforms. Long running processes usually
require asynchronous communication between loosely coupled process
participants as well as the ability to persist the current state
of a process throughout its lifetime.
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