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Persistence Setting Guidelines for Workflow Processes


In general, workflow processes are classified into two categories:

Persistence Guidelines for In-Memory Workflow Processes

For in-memory workflows, it is recommended not to set persistence for these workflow processes. The performance cost of in-memory workflows is significantly increased when persistence is turned on.

Errors that occur when executing in-memory workflows are usually logged to Siebel Server log files. Review these log files to detect performance errors.

NOTE:  Usage of Wait step (in minutes, hours, and days) implicitly turns on persistence, but no user setting is needed for this setting.

Persistence Guidelines for Long-Running Workflows

For long-running workflows, the recommended settings are as follows:

Field
Setting
Persistence Frequency
On Pause
Persistence Level
Current State

It is recommended that these settings be used only for workflow processes whose execution spans a significant time duration and needs to be suspended and resumed at a later time. Production workflows must have these settings to enable the long-running workflow feature.

There is a significant performance impact when using this feature. The performance impact is minimized when these settings are applied to complex workflows where the overall execution time of the workflow is much larger than the overhead of storing and retrieving workflow state.

Persistence Guidelines for Debugging Workflow Processes

Use persistence for either long-running or in-memory workflows to debug and troubleshoot workflows. Setting persistence is typically recommended during the development phase in order to make sure workflows are working correctly. For debugging and tracing, any combination of level and frequency can be used and provides detailed data with appropriate performance impacts.

Use the following settings to provide current step level debugging data with medium performance impact. This setting is the minimum setting.

Field
Setting
Persistence Frequency
On Pause
Persistence Level
Current State

Use the following settings to provide step level debugging at all steps with very high performance impacts. This setting this is the maximum setting.

Field
Setting
Persistence Frequency
Every Step
Persistence Level
All Steps

It is strongly recommended to:

Error Handling and Monitoring

For application error handling, it is recommended that workflow processes be developed to incorporate error handling within the workflow definition. Siebel Workflow provides error handling through two features: exception branches and error processes. Generally, use exception branches or error processes to handle application errors.

For more information on exception branches, refer to Siebel Business Process Designer Administration Guide.


 Performance Tuning Guide 
 Published: 24 October 2003