Glossary

activity

a process element that associates executable logic with an event such as a status change or timer event.

activity status

the outcome of an activity in a process, for example, Started, Canceled, or Accepted. The status of an activity is typically used to trigger the next activity.

annotation

a note that is added to a process to provide supporting information about a process or element within the process. These notes are for presentation only and are not associated with the run-time process instance.

data object

an object that holds the business data required to execute workflow process activities.

decision gateway

a type of gateway that controls which sequence flow is executed by evaluating the expression associated with the gateway. Expression are evaluated at run time. See also gateway.

gateway

a process diagram element that controls the execution of sequence flows through a process. Types of gateways include logic gateways, merge/fork gateways, and decision gateways.

instance

See process instance

logic gateway

a type of gateway that controls which sequence flow is executed by using AND or OR logic. See also gateway.

merge/fork gateway

a type of gateway that enables multiple tasks or sequence flows to execute in parallel. A merge/fork gateway allows multiple sequence flows to converge and individual sequence flows to diverge. All paths from a merge/fork gateway are executed. See also gateway.

participant

a user, group, or role that is assigned to an activity. These users, groups, and roles are defined in SAS metadata and are mapped to standard roles for the process.

policy

a process element that associates executable logic with an event such as a status change or timer event.

process

a series of activities, together with the participants and the logic required to execute the activities. A workflow process includes policies, status values, and data objects.

process definition

a process template that has been uploaded to the server and activated. Process definitions are used by the SAS Workflow Engine to create new workflow process instances.

process instance

a process that is running in the SAS Workflow Engine. After a process template is uploaded to the server and activated, client applications can use the template to create and run a new copy of the process definition. Each new copy is a process instance.

process template

a model of a process that has been saved to an XML file.

sequence flow

a connection, typically represented by an arrow, between process diagram elements. Sequence flows indicate the order in which activities are executed.

swimlane

a process diagram element that enables you to group activities that are assigned to the same participant.

workflow

a sequence of processes, together with the people, the tools, and the information necessary to accomplish a specific business objective or goal.