In a business scenario, any installed application may need some modification at some stage. In such a case, the administrator may have to remove the existing process template and install the modified process template. This activity continues if the process template needs more revisions, and the version maintenance becomes difficult. Further, users have only the latest version available, and if they need an intermediate version, then the removal and addition may cause confusion.
BP Server provides the Process Template Versioning feature to overcome this problem by simplifying the version availability and maintenance.
Process Template Versioning allows the installation of a new version of an existing installed application.
Note: In Business Process Server, an application is an installed, executable business process, while a process template is a model of business flow which includes worksteps, connectors and dataslots. Once a process template is published and installed as an Business Process Server application, users can work on the new application.
Versioning enables you to install various versions of a template simultaneously, so that at any specific time, a single version remains activated and all other versions are deprecated. You can publish new versions of the installed application without removing the active application and all of its active instances, and also without stopping the BP Server.
Versioning is helpful when your existing process template is deprecated and the modified process template is installed with the same AppName. If a similar change is required again, then you can install a new version, and deprecate all the other versions. Whenever you need to work on any previously deprecated version, you must uninstall the versions created after that. BP Server automatically picks up the last version as the current one.
