Issue when generating XPDL from process flows

Question

I have a process flow which has the following architecture.
It begins with a Start activity called “START1”. START1 has two parameters P_MESSAGE_TYPE and P_MESSAGE_ID. These parameters are populated from values provided by an external process. From START1 an unconditional transition goes to a ROUTE activity. Leaving the ROUTE activity are 18 conditional transitions and 1 unconditional transition.
The 18 conditional transitions each perform a test on the parameter value supplied in P_MESSAGE_TYPE. The value supplied is checked against a string value (they all check for different values, e.g. 'referenceEngineeringInstructionRecordExtract'). The 1 unconditional transition provides an “emergency exit” should something come through that does not match any of the 18 conditions.
If there is a match against one of the 18 conditions then that particular transition is followed and a sub-process on the end of that transition is executed. Flow then continues from that sub-process on to an OR operator (which brings together the exit transitions from all 18 of these sub-processes) before the flow ends with the ususal Success, Error and Warning activities.
Here is the problem. When I build this process flow from scratch it generate out the XPDL it works fine. The XPDL generated around some of the conditional transitions looks like this:
<Transition Id="TRANSITION_4" From="MESSAGE_TYPE_ROUTER" To="R_EI_PART_CHANGE">
<Condition Type="CONDITION">
<Xpression>"P_MESSAGE_TYPE" ='referenceEngineeringInstructionPartChangeRecordExtract'</Xpression>
</Condition>
</Transition>
<Transition Id="TRANSITION_5" From="MESSAGE_TYPE_ROUTER" To="R_ENGINEERING_INSTRUCTION">
<Condition Type="CONDITION">
<Xpression>"P_MESSAGE_TYPE" ='referenceEngineeringInstructionRecordExtract'</Xpression>
</Condition>
</Transition>
<Transition Id="TRANSITION_6" From="MESSAGE_TYPE_ROUTER" To="R_FATIGUE">
<Condition Type="CONDITION">
<Xpression>"P_MESSAGE_TYPE" ='referenceFatigueParameterRecordExtract'</Xpression>
</Condition>
</Transition>
Here the complex condition in the transitions can be seen as, for example, *"P_MESSAGE_TYPE" ='referenceEngineeringInstructionPartChangeRecordExtract'* which appears in the process flow editor in the form *"START1"."P_MESSAGE_TYPE"='referenceEngineeringInstructionPartChangeRecordExtract'*
and these are all consistent throughout, i.e. every transition in thn process flow editor shows the “START1” which then seems to get stripped off during the XPDL generation.
Now, if I make a change to the flow (e.g. remove a sub-process or add a new sub-process) and regenerate the XPDL what usually gets generated is of this form:
<Transition Id="TRANSITION_4" From="MESSAGE_TYPE_ROUTER" To="R_EI_PART_CHANGE">
<Condition Type="CONDITION">
<Xpression>"P_MESSAGE_TYPE" ='referenceEngineeringInstructionPartChangeRecordExtract'</Xpression>
</Condition>
</Transition>
<Transition Id="TRANSITION_5" From="MESSAGE_TYPE_ROUTER" To="R_ENGINEERING_INSTRUCTION">
<Condition Type="CONDITION">
<Xpression>"START1"."P_MESSAGE_TYPE" ='referenceEngineeringInstructionRecordExtract'</Xpression>
</Condition>
</Transition>
<Transition Id="TRANSITION_6" From="MESSAGE_TYPE_ROUTER" To="R_FATIGUE">
<Condition Type="CONDITION">
<Xpression>"P_MESSAGE_TYPE" ='referenceFatigueParameterRecordExtract'</Xpression>
</Condition>
</Transition>     
What can be seen here is that for some reason the generator has kept the “START1” context of P_MESSAGE_TYPE in the test for referenceEngineeringInstructionRecordExtract (and for two others that I haven't included) but not for the remaining 15 which appear as normal. This results in code that falls over at runtime. I haven't touched these conditional transitions between edits. They are uniquely sequenced and the process flow validates successfully.
Has anyone else seen this issue before? I can’t find any reference to it either in MetaLink or in the forums.
Edited by: AndrewD on Jul 3, 2009 1:57 PM

Answer 1

Hi David,
Thanks for the reply. The client version is 10.2.0.2.8 on a 10.2.0.2 repository. I suspect that it is something internally buggy. I have since found other issues - like I open up one process flow and choose the "Generate" option from the menu, whereupon it generates the XPDL for the last process I opened and not the current one...seems like there are several issues in this area.
Andrew