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Pros and Cons of Writing to the Same Virtual Directory
Symantec® ServiceDesk Customization Guide 7.0
The versioning method in this section is a very simple versioning method. Its steps
include:
1.
Create a copy of a project, renaming the copy accordingly
2.
Make and test changes
3.
Publish to production
Use the name of the project (renamed in step 1)
Rename the virtual directory (optional)
4.
Update the application property in ServiceDesk (optional)
A more sophisticated change management process is detailed in a series of 4 videos
posted to http://www.WorkflowSwat.com, under "Learn." This way of maintaining
versions of processes is recommended for companies that have larger scale usage of
Workflow processes. Symantec recommends reviewing both methods then making a
decision that makes sense for your organization.
If a process is going to a new virtual directory, you are essentially creating a completely
new process (even if the process does the exact same thing as the old process). All of
the "in progress" tickets continue to use the original process. ServiceDesk starts to use
version 2 of that process for all new instances initiated after publishing AND after
updating the application property in ServiceDesk with the new location of the process.
Publishing to the same virtual directory (essentially overwriting an existing process), can
break current instances of the process. However, "breaking" is very unlikely for "quick"
processes, such as routing rules that only run for a split second.
If you publish over an existing virtual directory the only instances that are broken are
ones in an active state. For instance, if you have a web forms process, and people have
some forms open, if you publish to that same virtual directory, the next time a button is
clicked on the open forms, an error message will display. This is also the case for
Workflow processes. If a person is in a Dialog Workflow step and has a form open, the
next time a button is clicked, an error message will display. But if a workflow process is
at a workflow step and you publish to its virtual directory, nothing is lost since the
process was at rest.
The good news is that the process data is not lost when you publish to the same virtual
directory. The only information lost was the data being entered into the form at the
time.
So when making changes to a project, if the process is going to the same virtual
directory, you need to consider the project type. If the process is a Web Forms project
type, you do not need to be as concerned about impacting "in process" processes even
though you are overwriting the virtual directory contents. This is because Web Forms
processes are stateless; these types of projects simply launch when initiated, present
the user with a form to fill out, hand off data to another process, and end. They do not
have prolonged execution like a Workflow project type that can remain "in process" for
an extended period of time, collecting data along the way. However with Workflow
projects, more consideration needs to be made, as explained in the following section.
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