Rational Developer for System z, Version 7.6

The flow path

The flow path of a flow is the connected sequence of nodes that defines the path of execution for the flow.
The topics contains the following subtopics:

Flow path

The flow editor displays the flow path of a flow as a series of various-colored icons (flow nodes) connected by black lines capped with arrows (connections) as illustrated in Figure 1 following. The arrows indicate the direction of execution:

Figure 1. Flow path of CatalogOrder.seqflow

For a description of the nodes in the flow path shown in Figure 1 see Contents of a flow.

A flow path is created when the flow itself to which the flow path belongs is created. You can create a new flow in either of two ways (see Creating a flow):
  • In the New Flow wizard, you can create a flow step by step.
  • In the host editor, you can record a new flow for a terminal application.
You can add to or modify the flow path of a flow in the following ways:
  • You can create and modify individual flow nodes in the flow editor (see Flow editor).
  • You can extend or add a branch to the flow path by recording an additional path in the host editor (see Creating a flow).

Flow branches and loops

The flow path of a flow can contain alternate branches (flow branches) and loops.

You can create flow branches in the following ways:

You can create loops in the following ways:

Recording or playing a flow path in the host editor

This section applies only to a terminal flow (a flow that interacts directly with a terminal application on a remote host).

In the host editor:

Disconnected paths

A path (or disconnected path) is a connected sequence of nodes that is not connected in any way to the flow path of a flow.

During the development and testing of a flow, it is common for a flow to temporarily contain one or more paths that the designer has not yet connected to the flow path. These disconnected paths are saved into the flow file when you close the flow editor and are displayed again on the flow editor canvas when you reopen the flow file in the flow editor.

However, when you run the Generate Runtime Code wizard on a flow containing such disconnected paths, the wizard does not process the disconnected paths and does not generate any runtime code for them. Therefore, as far as the runtime environment is concerned, disconnected paths do not exist at all in the flow.

Therefore, for a path to be executable at run time, it must be connected in some way to the flow path of the flow.


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