BPM Process split, Or Split, Conditional, Multiple Gatways

Question

Hi
I am New to this. Please explain what are these and when we use these (split, Or Split, Conditional, Multiple ) when developing a BPM Process. Also where we define rules in BPM

Answer 1

The Studio documentation might help a little (download it from http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13154_01/bpm/docs65/index.html -> click "PDF" beside the "BPM Studio Guide" link).
At a high level, the Split activity speeds the process by allowing multiple parallel processing of an instance.
The Or Split activity is similar to a Split but the Conditional transitions create the copies going through the circuit. Only if all of the Conditional transitions are false is the one Unconditional transition taken.
The Multiple activity allows any number of instances to be created from a single instance using logic hit at runtime. This is useful in processes that must solicit information from a number of different sources and these sources may not be known until runtime (for example, collecting bids from multiple suppliers). Only one outgoing transition is allowed from a Mulitple activity. A Subflow activity is often used after a Mulitple, which enables you to send the copied instances to multiple processes depending upon the information you need to retrieve.
All three of these must be paired with a Join activity. The Join activity rejoins the copies of the replicated instances with the original parent instance after they have completed the Split, Or Split or Multiple circuit
The "Conditional" activity is similar to the traditional decision diamond that has been drawn on flow charts for years. Unlike the Split, Multiple and Or Split activities described above, the Conditional only has one instance flowing out of it via one transition at runtime. Typically in the process's design you might have a Conditional activity with an unconditional transition going to an activity downstream and a conditional transition going to another activity downstream. At runtime when the work item instance reaches the Conditional activity the work item instance either flows through the conditional transition (if it evaluates as true) or else the unconditional transition if the conditional transition evaluated as false.
The key thing to remember is that coming out of a Conditional activity, the work item instance can only exit via one transition (one path). This is the different when work item instances leave a Split, Or Split or a Multiple activity. For these three gateway activities, copies of the work item instance can flow out of these activities via several paths concurrently.
Hope this helps,
Dan