Combining optional and mandatory reviewers for HumanTasks

Question

Hi,
for a review-process we'd like to implement the following behavior using humanTasks in SOA-Suite 11g (PS5): There is a list of reviewers that are divided into optional and mandatory reviewers. All of them review the document in parallel. The processes ends when all (optional+mandatory) have confirmed the document. If after some deadline all mandatory reviewers have confirmed the process shall continue. However we want to wait until all mandatory reviewers have confirmed.
NB: There is no rejection in this process.
I've thought of the following solution: We have to parallel stages "optionalStage" and "mandatoryStage". The optionalStage contains all the optionalReviewers (in Parallel), the mandatoryStage contains the mandatory ones (also in parallel). On the optionalStage I've put a "Limit allocation duration" of e.g. 8 hours.
This is working fine. However: What if I'd like to specify this value not fixed but by an expression? On the global level this is possible, however it seems to not be possible on the "participant" level. Also the XML differs:
<participants isAdhocRoutingSupported="false">
<parallel collaboration="false" name="ParallelStages">
<allResponders>
<defaultOutcome type="STATIC">APPROVE</defaultOutcome>
<outcomePercentage type="STATIC">50</outcomePercentage>
</allResponders>
<routingSlip>
<participants>
<stage name="optionalReviewers">
<participant name="optionals" expirationDuration="PT23H">
<resource type="STATIC" identityType="user">johannes</resource>
</participant>
</stage>
</participants>
</routingSlip>
<routingSlip>
<participants>
<stage name="mandatoryReviewers">
<participant name="mandatory" expirationDuration="PT23H">
<resource type="STATIC" identityType="user">jochen</resource>
<resource type="STATIC" identityType="user">thomas</resource>
</participant>
</stage>
</participants>
</routingSlip>
</parallel>
</participants>
there is just an attribute for the expirationDuration. However, for the global deadline, it is:
<expirationDuration duration="PT22H" type="STATIC"
useBusinessCalendar="false"/>
or in the XPATH-case:
<expirationDuration duration="'PT22H'" type="XPATH"
useBusinessCalendar="false"/>
Any ideas how I could achieve this behavior? (without too much programming)
Regards,
Johannes

Answer 1

thanks, but i have comments on that, suppose we have
4 optional arguments in a method not just 1, and we
have another methods on the same class, these have
also another optional arguments, i think we will
repeat writing each method header many times ( i know
not the body of the method, but the header also will
be confusing)??I'm not following your hypothetical situation here, but it doesn't change what I said earlier.
Here's Java's varargs, but, as I stated, it doesn't let you have N optional args.
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/language/varargs.html
You don't have to create sigatures for every possible combination--and you shouldn't. It gets too messy. Just provide signatures for the most common cases, and one that includes everything, but allows the "optional" args to be null.