Transaction Boundaries

This feature is available exclusively in the Flowset Control Enterprise edition.

Transaction boundary visualization is a visual highlight of commit points and wait states of the BPM engine. The feature helps to:

  • understand where the process saves its state;

  • see where new transactions are created;

  • analyze the correctness of asynchronous continuations;

  • identify retry risks and potential bottlenecks.

The feature is available on the following pages:

How to Enable the Display

  1. Navigate to Processes or Process Instances.

  2. Select the desired process.

  3. Open the diagram.

  4. Enable Transaction Boundary Display.

    transaction 1

Transaction boundaries will be shown directly on the BPMN diagram.

transaction 2

Diagram Legend

Two types of dashed lines are used for the display:

transaction 2
  • Blue dashed lines — transaction commits performed by the BPM engine by default.

  • Red dashed lines — commits defined by a developer during process modeling.

BPM Engine Wait State

Indicated by blue markers on the incoming or outgoing flows of an element.

  • Marks the point at which the process saves its state and enters a waiting mode.

  • After this point, execution continues within a new transaction.

  • Commonly corresponds to:

    • Service Task (External);

    • Receive Task;

    • User Task;

    • Message Catch Event;

    • Timer Event;

    • Signal Event;

    • Event Based Gateway;

Asynchronous Continuations (Async Before/After)

Indicated by red dashed markers on the boundaries of an element.

  • Signal that a separate transaction is created before (async before) or after (async after) an activity is executed.

  • Allow the execution of an activity to be isolated.

  • Used to improve fault tolerance and process manageability.

Notes and Recommendations

  • If an element is marked as a wait state, its execution always starts in a new transaction.

  • Asynchronous continuations are useful for “breaking up” long synchronous segments.

  • Too many transaction boundaries can lead to increased transactional overhead.