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General Board / BPMN Object Reuse

« on: December 03, 2020, 04:58:12 am »

I'm so confused... 

I'm trying to figure out how to reuse various objects (roles, lanes, etc.) in different diagrams. In one post (https://www.sparxsystems.com/forums/smf/index.php/topic,38775.msg240645.html#msg240645), Eve said (last reply) that pools, lanes, and events are not reusable. In another post, Geert said that, according the BPMN spec, you're not supposed to reuse BPMN elements because they only live inside each instance of a process.

In other posts, I've read that there are various ways to effect reuse:

• You can create a clone of an object, but that's not really reuse (or is it?) because you're essentially creating a new object (different GUID) with the same name. How does EA know the cloned object references the original object? Does the cloned object contain the GUID of the original? Are the partnerRef and partnerEntity TVs filled out with the original object's name? I know I should check this myself, but I'm in the middle of a deliverable my client wants yesterday.
• You can drag an object from the project onto a different diagram and create a link to the original object. I've done this in the past.
• You can create an alias (I think).
• If you have pools and lanes defined in a project catalog, you can create a new pool or lane in a diagram and use the partnerEntity/partnerRef TVs to make the name of the newly created pool or lane display there. Again, it doesn't seem like it's truly reusing the original object, just reusing its name.
• Cephus Consulting demostrates different ways to reuse EA BPMN objects, including pools and lanes, in one or two videos. But they were made using older versions of EA; I don't know if anything has changed in newer versions of EA relative to the way EA manages BPMN objects or allows them to be managed (meaning reused).

Would someone tell me if my understanding of the concept of reuse and how it's accomplished in EA using BPMN offbase? Under which circumstances would someone prefer to use one method over another? The answer is probably a hearty, "It depends."

As a side note, I was playing with reusing data stores by creating a new data store as a DataStoreReference and then inserting (by picking the object in the popup project browser) into the dataStoreRef field one of the data stores in my catalog. The name displayed on the data store reference object remained blank (I deleted the default name associated with the object as you would with lanes and pools). Am I doing something wrong? I would hope it's a bug so I can shift the blame to EA instead of my lack of knowledge.
Thanks for any help anyone can provide!

Michael

Thanks