Overview
When you are developing in Studio Cloud Services, it is important to understand how the synchronization of metadata is executed when you work with co-developers. You need to be aware of how synchronization affects how you manage values of parameter entities managed in both the development and production environment.
This article explains how Studio Cloud Services synchronizes metadata and mentions practices to lookup values of parameter entities used in your cloud development environment.
To understand how the synchronization of metadata is executed, let us recall the difference between metadata and data. Metadata refers to attributes and information that describes and gives properties to the elements being configured and created in Bizagi Studio. For example, visual names of a task, the name of a process, the configuration of services tasks, environment parameters, or business options.
On the other hand, data is considered in Bizagi as the values or data that users can register, query, or see in the Work Portal. That includes data from Master, Parameter, or Persona entities.
Studio Cloud Services holds the project metadata in a repository called the catalog, refer to Service architecture. Additionally, when a user opens Bizagi Studio, a local file containing all the project metadata is created. Hence, all the elements, configured through Bizagi Studio by a co-developer, are considered metadata, and synchronization between a local file and the cloud catalog considers that metadata. Bizagi Studio Cloud Services never transfers data from a user’s Bizagi Studio to the catalog. Furthermore, the catalog stores metadata, while data is stored in a separate cloud database.
Bizagi synchronizes metadata between the user’s local file and the cloud catalog every time the user creates an element within a module in Bizagi Studio. If the metadata affects tables in the database, this information is also updated in the project database store in the environment's data storage. For example, when a user creates an entity, in the expert view, Bizagi synchronizes metadata, to keep the project catalog and the environment database updated, so other users can see what a user has created both in Bizagi Studio, and when they run the Work Portal on the cloud.
Data, on the other hand, is transferred from or to the Work Portal. That includes information registered in tasks, and about users, Personas, or parameter entities managed from the Work Portal in the admin menu. Furthermore, data stored in the environment database is never transferred to a user's Bizagi Studio local file, because the local file stores metadata. Therefore users never see data in Bizagi Studio.
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When a parameter entity is replicated through Data replication, records of the entity are not shown on Bizagi Studio since it comes from an external data source. This consideration applies for all features within Bizagi Studio like actions or validations on forms, values in the expert view, or records of entities in expressions. |
Handling values of parameter entities
When you use parameter entities in a project in the development environment, you can add values in two ways:
1. From Bizagi Studio: You can add values of parameter entities in two ways. You can add them from the Expert view:
You can also add them when you create a data model:
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In Studio Cloud Services this option is applicable to entities managed in the development environment. |
2. From the Work Portal: When a Parameter entity is marked to be administered in the Work Portal, you can add values from the admin menu.
Bizagi handles values of parameter entities differently if you configure an entity to be managed in the development or in the production environment. Refer to where to manage Parameter entities to know how to handle parameter entities in different environments, whether the values are handled as metadata or data. Values are handled differently because Bizagi assesses whether values of parameter entities are considered in a deployment package. Remember that a deployment package contains metadata. Hence, if a parameter entity is managed in the development environment, values of that entity are deployed, from the development environment to the production environment, as metadata.
On the other hand, values of parameter entities managed in the production environment are never deployed in a package, so those values are not considered as metadata.
As explained in Synchronization of data, in Studio Cloud Services only the metadata is synchronized between co-developers’ Bizagi Studio instances and the metadata catalog. Data is transferred from the environment database to the Work Portal. When a user adds values of a parameter entity in the Work Portal, (so they are handled as data) Bizagi does not synchronize those values to users’ Bizagi Studio instances and they are not displayed.
The following table sums up how do you need to handle the values of parameter entities in Studio Cloud Services:
Where is the parameter entity managed? |
Where do you add values in Studio Cloud Services? |
Are values synchronized as metadata in co-developers’ Bizagi Studio? |
Consideration |
|---|---|---|---|
Development |
Bizagi Studio •Expert view •Data model |
Yes |
Values added from Bizagi Studio are synchronized between all users and the project metadata catalog stored in the cloud. |
Production |
Work Portal |
No |
Values are just displayed in the Work Portal, and not synchronized in Bizagi Studio. |
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If you change the administration of a parameter entity, values previously registered are clean, and the new values, after the change persist. |
Using values of Parameter entities in Business Rules
If you need to test business rules to evaluate the values of parameter entities, you can use the Select Parameter Value option to retrieve a value using filters in the getAttrib function:
This option is applicable to entities managed in the development environment. If you need to retrieve values of entities managed in the production environment, look up the business keys values in the Work Portal.
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In case you need to include values in a expression from an entity managed in the production environment, you can create dummy values. Go to the Expert View, select Entities where new values can be added. However, these values are not displayed on Production or Testing environments. |
Last Updated 2/21/2024 11:36:56 AM