Obtain ServiceDeploymentId in TrackingParticipant - persistence

In WF4, I've created a descendant of TrackingParticipant. In the Track method, record.InstanceId gives me the GUID of the workflow instance.
I'm using the SqlWorkflowInstanceStore for persistence. By default records are automatically deleted from the InstancesTable when the workflow completes. I want to keep it that way to keep the transaction database small.
This creates a problem for reporting, though. My TrackingParticipant will log the instance ID to a reporting table (along with other tracking information), but I'll want to join to the ServiceDeploymentsTable. If the workflow is complete, that GUID won't be in the InstancesTable, so I won't be able to look up the ServiceDeploymentId.
How can I obtain the ServiceDeploymentId in the TrackingParticipant? Alternately, how can I obtain it in the workflow to add it to a CustomTrackingRecord?

You can't get the ServiceDeploymentId in the TrackingParticipant. Basically the ServiceDeploymentId is an internal detail of the SqlWorkflowInstanceStore.
I would either set the SqlWorkflowInstanceStore to not delete the worklow instance upon completion and do so myself at some later point in time after saving the ServiceDeploymentId with the InstanceId.
An alternative is to use auto cleanup with the SqlWorkflowInstanceStore and retreive the ServiceDeploymentId when the first tracking record is generated. At that point the workflow is not complete so the original instance record is still there.

Related

The correct HTTP method for resetting data

I want to "reset" certain data in my database tables using a RESTful method but I'm not sure which one I should be using. UPDATE because I'm deleting records and updating the record where the ID is referenced (but never removing the record where ID lives itself), or DELETE because my main action is to delete associated records and updating is tracking those changes?
I suppose this action can be ran multiple times but the result will be the same, however the ID will always be found when "resetting".
I think you want the DELETE method

Strategy to generate auto increment unique number in CQ

I have a requirement to create CQ pages programmatically. But the challenge is that the page name/uri should be autogenerated combination of a string + unique number (eg. PT2000, PT2001).
Can someone tell me a way way to generate an autoincrement-id/constant in CQ in a way that the id's are unique even with multiple concurrent request?
Use a service that provides you with the ID and that manages the counter inside a volatile instance variable to make sure that state changes by one thread are immediately communicated to all other threads.
This should do the trick as long as your can guarantee that your implementation runs on a single author node. In a cluster scenario you additionally have to care about executing it only on one node.
i'd suggest creating a service that manages its counters somewhere in the repository, and also acts as a jcr EventListener. the service should listen for NODE_ADDED events on parent nodes of type cq:Page, and once onEvent is called, it can assigned the unique id at that point. you'd want to use synchronization obviously so that overlapping calls to onEvent() won't use up the same id.
You can use a GUID, Graphic User ID, the ID generated has a great probablity of uniqueness.
See wiki reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globally_unique_identifier
and to create GUID:
Create a GUID in Java
This will ease you effort to verify the number is unique so just generate the ID and create the pages with that ID.
Doesn't AEM automatically append numbers to same name pages?
If it doesn't, then presumably this would fail, at which point you start over with the next number. Best guess should be enough in this case.

Accessing multi-level fields in a CRM 2011 Workflow

Sorry if this is sort of confusing because I'm not sure how to word this. I am trying to create a workflow that runs off of Account's in Microsoft CRM 2011. One part of this workflow requires me to retrieve a field contained in the Business Unit of the User in the Account's "Created By" field. However, the workflow will only allow me to access the Business Unit itself, but not any of its fields.
I'm wondering if there is a simple trick or work-around that will allow me access to this data.
Thanks!
For reference, the Account has a User, who has a Business Unit, and the Business Unit has a field I need to access. CRM, however, doesn't want to let me get more than 2 levels deep when accessing fields.
Clunky but do-able if you accept a bit of denormalisation (temporarily or otherwise). I'll assume for the sake of example you want to get at the "cost centre" field from the BU.
Add a field on User entity to temporarily hold the value from the BU (so make it same type and length, text(100) in this case), optionally put it on the form.
Create a child workflow for the User entity to update the user with the "cost centre" value from their BU. Make it only available to run as a child, not onDemand or anything else. Activate
In your Account workflow, add a step to call the child workflow against the relevant user (eg Created By in your case).
Add a step to wait until the new cost centre field on the user record contains data.
Now do whatever you need to with the value from the user record, such as update the Account, or do some branched logic.
Whatever you do, once you have used the value, clear the field on the user record, or do this as the last step of the workflow.
Now, since Users don't change BU very often, you might actually just go ahead and keep that value on the User record permanently, and instead of a child workflow, simply run this on create of a new user, or on change of BU, and store the value permanently on the User record. Yes, it is 'denormalised' and not purest SQL design, but then you don't need a child workflow, you don't need a wait state and you don't have to clear the value at the end, or worry about what happens when two Accounts need to run their workflow at the same time. I include the more general approach above as this might apply to other records which do change their parent quite often.
Just an additional thought - you can access the "owning business unit" of the Account, but this will be the BU of the Owning User, rather than the Created By, but is your business process such that this would normally be the same person? (eg users only have Create priviledge to "user owned" depth, so can only create records they own).
If so, then you could get at the BU directly from the Account, and then any fields on it too (in a condition or to update the Account)
Alternative which is less ideal but a similar approach - add a relationship from Account to BU (eg "created BU"). Now you can update the Account with this by referring to the Created By User's BU, then in the next step, reference this value from the Account. This is again denormalised, and less preferable since number of Accounts is far greater than number of users, so the level of duplicate information is much higher.
You can't get deeper with the standard steps of a workflow.
The solution is to create a custom workflow activity, you can start from this article:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg328515.aspx

How to get list of aggregates using JOliviers's CommonDomain and EventStore?

The repository in the CommonDomain only exposes the "GetById()". So what to do if my Handler needs a list of Customers for example?
On face value of your question, if you needed to perform operations on multiple aggregates, you would just provide the ID's of each aggregate in your command (which the client would obtain from the query side), then you get each aggregate from the repository.
However, looking at one of your comments in response to another answer I see what you are actually referring to is set based validation.
This very question has raised quite a lot debate about how to do this, and Greg Young has written an blog post on it.
The classic question is 'how do I check that the username hasn't already been used when processing my 'CreateUserCommand'. I believe the suggested approach is to assume that the client has already done this check by asking the query side before issuing the command. When the user aggregate is created the UserCreatedEvent will be raised and handled by the query side. Here, the insert query will fail (either because of a check or unique constraint in the DB), and a compensating command would be issued, which would delete the newly created aggregate and perhaps email the user telling them the username is already taken.
The main point is, you assume that the client has done the check. I know this is approach is difficult to grasp at first - but it's the nature of eventual consistency.
Also you might want to read this other question which is similar, and contains some wise words from Udi Dahan.
In the classic event sourcing model, queries like get all customers would be carried out by a separate query handler which listens to all events in the domain and builds a query model to satisfy the relevant questions.
If you need to query customers by last name, for instance, you could listen to all customer created and customer name change events and just update one table of last-name to customer-id pairs. You could hold other information relevant to the UI that is showing the data, or you could simply hold IDs and go to the repository for the relevant customers in order to work further with them.
You don't need list of customers in your handler. Each aggregate MUST be processed in its own transaction. If you want to show this list to user - just build appropriate view.
Your command needs to contain the id of the aggregate root it should operate on.
This id will be looked up by the client sending the command using a view in your readmodel. This view will be populated with data from the events that your AR emits.

Can Primary-Keys be re-used once deleted?

0x80040237 Cannot insert duplicate key.
I'm trying to write an import routine for MSCRM4.0 through the CrmService.
This has been successful up until this point. Initially I was just letting CRM generate the primary keys of the records. But my client wanted the ability to set the key of a our custom entity to predefined values. Potentially this enables us to know what data was created by our installer, and what data was created post-install.
I tested to ensure that the Guids can be set when calling the CrmService.Update() method and the results indicated that records were created with our desired values. I ran my import and everything seemed successful. In modifying my validation code of the import files, I deleted the data (through the crm browser interface) and tried to re-import. Unfortunately now it throws and a duplicate key error.
Why is this error being thrown? Does the Crm interface delete the record, or does it still exist but hidden from user's eyes? Is there a way to ensure that a deleted record is permanently deleted and the Guid becomes free? In a live environment, these Guids would never have existed, but during my development I need these imports to be successful.
By the way, considering I'm having this issue, does this imply that statically setting Guids is not a recommended practice?
As far I can tell entities are soft-deleted so it would not be possible to reuse that Guid unless you (or the deletion service) deleted the entity out of the database.
For example in the LeadBase table you will find a field called DeletionStateCode, a value of 0 implies the record has not been deleted.
A value of 2 marks the record for deletion. There's a deletion service that runs every 2(?) hours to physically delete those records from the table.
I think Zahir is right, try running the deletion service and try again. There's some info here: http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2006/10/24/purging-old-instances-of-workflow-in-microsoft-crm.aspx
Zahir is correct.
After you import and delete the records, you can kick off the deletion service at a time you choose with this tool. That will make it easier to test imports and reimports.