# Process Control Design Time Considerations

This section outlines some of the issues you must consider when you are designing a process control for your business process. The issues covered in this section are:

- Using a Process Control in Stateless and Stateful Business Processes
- Using Process Controls in Synchronous and Asynchronous Business Processes
- Using a Process Control from the Parent Process
- Process Control Location

### Using a Process Control in Stateless and Stateful Business Processes

The number of transactions contained in a business process determines whether the process is stateless or stateful. For more information, see Building Stateless and Stateful Processes. This section covers some of the issues you should consider when designing a Process control for stateless and stateful business processes.

When designing your Process control, adhere to the following rules:

- Whether you are designing a stateless or stateful business process, the Process control can invoke any request or response node. However, for stateful processes, the first request must be a start request.
- The start method that invokes the call governs which continue methods may be called during the call.
- The order in which the methods on the control are called matters in a stateful process.
- Process controls that refer to stateful processes only refer to one process at a time.

### Using Process Controls in Synchronous and Asynchronous Business Processes

Business processes can have both synchronous or asynchronous request methods. For more information, see Building Synchronous and Asynchronous Business Processes. This section covers some of the issues you should consider when designing a Process control for synchronous and asynchronous business processes.

When designing your Process control, remember:

- In a synchronous invocation, the input and response arguments are combined into a single operation.
- In an asynchronous invocation, one-to-one mapping takes place. Any response node becomes a method within the callback interface.

### Using a Process Control from the Parent Process

The Process control is typically used to call a subprocess from a parent business process. When the Process control is invoked from the parent process, the control is invoked normally if the subprocess is in the same application.

If the subprocess control is in a different application, you must copy the subprocess control into the parent process control and change the location of the subprocess control so that it is the same as the location of the parent process control, if you want the call to invoke normally.

### Process Control Location

When you create a Process control, it is displayed in the Applications tab and an instance of the control is added to the Data Palette. The location of the Process control is displayed in the Property Editor.

Note: If the Property Editor is not visible in WebLogic Workshop, click View Æ Property Editor from the menu bar.

To view the location of the Process control:

1. Double-click the Process control JCX file in the Application pane.

The Process control is displayed in the Design View and the Property Editor displays the properties of the Process control.

The location of the Process control is displayed in the location section of the Property Editor, in the uri field. The location is not an actual HTTP address, though it may appear that it is. The uri actually displays the location of the object within the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) tree.

Related Topics

Building Stateless and Stateful Business Processes

Building Synchronous and Asynchronous Business Processes