Configuring Business Processes for XA Transactions

Distributed Transaction Processing (DTP), more commonly known as XA, is a proposed W3C standard for keeping multiple transaction system components secure during short-lived and long-lived distributed transactions. This helps to ensure the integrity of distributed transactions.

XA transactions fall into two broad categories: short-lived and long-lived. A short-lived XA transaction is simpler, quicker, and requires fewer system resources than a long-lived transaction, but it remains Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, and Durable (ACID) throughout the transaction. A long-lived XA transaction is generally more complex, more distributed, and longer-running. In BPM, short-lived XA generally applies to a whole Business Process (whole Business Process XA), and long-lived XA generally applies to an individual Business Process activity (activity-level XA).

This section provides details and procedures for enabling XA support for whole Business Process XA as well as activity-level XA using BPM. For details about getting started using XA, see http://www.w3.org.

Enabling XA Support for a Whole Business Process

Whole Business Process XA for a Business Process is configured from the General page of the Business Process Properties dialog box. The following procedure provides the steps for enabling whole Business Process XA.

To enable XA transactions for a whole Business Process

1. In the Project Explorer, right-click a Business Process and then click Properties.

   The Business Process Properties window appears with the General page displayed.

2. In the Enable XA for Entire Business Process drop-down list, click Yes.

3. Click OK.

4. In the Business Process Designer toolbar, click Show Property Sheet.

5. In the Business Process Designer, click an invoke activity.

6. In the Transaction Support property of the property sheet, select Participates.

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for any other invoke activities in the Business Process.

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   Note –

   If you do not need to use persistence for other Business Processes in your Project, you do not need to enable XA for the entire Business Process.

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Enabling XA Support for an Individual Activity

BPM allows you to enable XA at the activity level for your Business Process. This is handled in the property sheet of any receive activity, invoke activity, or pick activity (OnMessage). The following procedure provides the steps for enabling activity-level XA.

In order to enable activity-level XA, you must deploy the Business Process using persistence.

To enable a XA transactions for an individual activity

1. In the Business Process Designer toolbar, click Show Property Sheet.

2. Select a receive activity, invoke activity, or pick activity (OnMessage).

3. In the Transaction Support property on the property sheet, select XA.

4. For each activity to be XA-enabled, repeat steps 2 and 3.