Subprocess Nodes

Hi,

We are working on a Landmark 11 upgrade, and I'm playing with the subprocess nodes. My current attempt is to create a subprocess that will run a Lawson job, taking the username and job name, and returning the eventual result. I'm also using the recommended coding for running jobs that Russel has posted previously since I was using the cgi-lawson commands previously.

I have a subprocess that seems to work, and I got it functioning inside a flow. However, the piece that seems weird to me is how we pass values to the nodes in the subprocess. In the docs, it says that the variables in the FromParent of the subprocess will get added to the start node. However, unless I add them manually to the parent's start node, I can't access them in an assign node.

Has anyone else used the subprocesses yet that can tell me what I'm missing?

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robert-canham

Bumping this in hopes that more people are on Landmark 11 and have tried subprocesses.

rmbell

We have used them here, and I have also noticed the variables in the parent process, are not "drop down" accessible, but will work when called on nodes where they can be typed directly. Since they are already populated, you can just code them where you need them outside of the assign nodes as they are treated like global variables. If you need to assign them for javascript purposes, you would want to create a new variable in the sub process, use javascript to code the parent variable and modify as needed, then assign the value to the new blank variable from the sub process. You will not want to put the parent variable in the sub process start node though, as it will blank or assign as coded.

unknown

I have used subprocesses recently. From what I have seen the behavior you saw in the docs is what happens: " the variables in the FromParent of the subprocess will get added to the start node. "

The catch is that this happens at runtime (you can see the subprocess variables getting initiated in your workunit logs in the parent processes start node). IPD does not show the subroutine start node variables in the available variable list when building a flow. You can type the variable names in manually and if written correctly it will work when you run it.

I think it would likely require an enhancement request to IPD to show subprocess start node variables in the parent process.

robert-canham

Thanks for the reply Robert. It appears I was going about it backwards. I was thinking I should assign my parent node values to the subprocess variable before it starts. Would you say it is better to have the subprocess always expect the parent to have a set variable and pull that value in after the "From Parent" node?

rmbell

That is our method, unless there are variables only needed by the sub process, we just treat the parent process variables as global and code them in where necessary.

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