Broadway Flow Window

Overview

The Broadway flow window is the main Broadway interface that enables the definition and the execution of business processes including Stages, Actors and links between the Actors.

To create a new Broadway flow:

1. Go to Project Tree > Shared Objects or any LU, right click Broadway > New Flow to open the Flow Name window.
2. Populate the flow name and click OK to open an empty Flow area.

Folders Support

In this case, the flow will be tagged with the folder's name. When a flow is not created under a folder, it can be tagged later using the Flow Properties window.

Note that the flow name ambiguity within the same Logical Unit is not supported. A flow name must be unique, even when created under different folders. The creation and import of flows with identical names is not restricted by the Fabric Studio, to allow the implementor to continue his work and update the flow name later. However, if there is more than 1 flow with the same name under the same LU, the flow execution will fail.

Flow Window Elements

The Broadway flow window includes the following elements described in this article:

• The flow area, which displays Stages and their Actors.
  • To add a Stage, either click the big +, or go to the Stage context menu > Insert After or Insert Before.
  • To add Actors to a Stage, click in the empty Stage area.
• Main menu, which enables running the flow and executing additional actions like Save as Actor.
• Stage context menu, which provides Stage activities like Merge or Delete.
• Actor context menu, which provides Actor activities like Add, Link or Export Actor.
• Actor Properties window, which enables viewing and editing the properties of a selected object.
• Run Results window, which displays the results of the flow execution.
• Flow Validation Footer, which displays the error messages in the flow, if exist.

Main Menu

The Main menu is a toolbar located at the top of the window. It has the following options:

Click for more information about how to run and debug the Broadway flow.

Stage Context Menu

To open the Stage context menu, click in the right corner of the Stage. This menu is dynamic, whereby some items are displayed only when they are applicable to the selected Stage.

Paste Selection	Paste the copied selection, for example an Actor from another Stage.
Collapse	Collapse the Stage.
Focus	Collapse all Stages of the same level except the selected one. When one of the collapsed Stages is a part of a branch, the respective branch’s Stages are collapsed too.
Insert After / Insert Before	Add a new Stage after or before the selected one.
Delete	Delete the selected Stage and its dependent branch.
Split	Split the selected Stage.
Merge	Merge the selected Stage.
Iterate Close	Close the iteration scope. The Iteration scope starts where the Iterate line type originates in the Stage.
Recovery Point	Click to set the flow recovery point to enable the flow to re-run from this point on during a failure.
Stage Condition	Click to open a popup window and select an Actor for the Stage. The Actor acts as a Stage condition. Note that Stage condition Actors are green.
Else	Click to mark the Stage to be executed if none of the conditions on the same level are true.
Error Handler	Click to open a popup window and select the Stage's Error Handler Actor. Note that Error Handler Actors are red.
Parallel	Click to set a number of Actors to be run parallelly within a Stage. When set, displays the number of parallel threads.
Transaction	Click to open or close the transaction.
Breakpoint	Click to set a breakpoint for the Stage. A breakpoint can be also set by clicking on the left of the Stage title. The list of flow's breakpoints is displayed in the Breakpoints Panel.
Remark	Click to add a remark to the Stage. If the remark already exists, a is displayed on the left of the three dots and the Remark popup is open displaying its text.

Actor Context Menu

To open the Actor's context menu, click in the right corner of the Actor. This menu is dynamic, whereby some items are displayed only when they are applicable to the selected Actor.

Actor Properties Window

The Actor's Properties in the Broadway flow window dynamically adjusts its layout to display data based on the structure of the selected Actor. For example, the number of input and output parameters, their data types and default values. To hide the Properties window, click anywhere in the empty Stage area.

Example of Actor's Properties Window

Click for more information about the Actor Properties window.

Note that if the link between two Actors is selected, the window's layout is adjusted to display the names of the From and To Actors, their parameters and the Link type.

Run Results Window

The Run Results window is a small popup window on the top of a Broadway flow window which displays the results after a flow is run:

• When the flow is completed successfully, it either displays the values of the external arguments (if they exist in the flow) or remains empty.

  

• When the flow fails, it displays the exception. The exception details can be viewed in the log.

  

In addition, if the Profiler is enabled, the Run Results window displays the profiler results.

Click for more information about the Broadway Profiler.

Flow Validation Footer

The Broadway flow window has a built-in mechanism for errors validation which is invoked when opening the flow before it is run. If the flow has errors, the validation icon in the Main menu displays the number of errors, for example: .

Click the icon to display the window footer with the error messages:

Click the error and choose to ignore the exception or fix the problem.

For example, a flow includes a DbCommand Actor that has mandatory input arguments which are currently empty. After the Actor is updating with the missing arguments, the validation errors are dismissed.