I need to automate the workflow after an event occurred. I do have experience in CRUD applications but not in Workflow/Batch processing. Need help in designing the system.
Requirement
The workflow involves 5 steps. Each step is a REST call and are dependent on previous step. EX of Steps: (VerifyIfUserInSystem, CreateUserIfNeeded, EnrollInOpt1, EnrollInOpt2,..)
My thought process is to maintain 2 DB Tables
WORKFLOW_STATUS Table which contains columns like (foreign key(referring to primary table), Workflow Status: (NEW, INPROGRESS, FINISHED, FAILED), Completed Step: (STEP1, STEP2,..), Processed Time,..)
EVENT_LOG Table to maintain the track of Events/Exceptions for a particular record (foreign key, STEP, ExceptionLog)
Question
#1. Is this a correct approach to orchestrate the system(which is not that complex)?
#2. As the steps involve REST Calls, I might have to stop the process when a service is not available and resume the process in a later point of time. I am not sure for many retry attempts should be made and how to maintain the no of attempts made before marking it as FAILED. (Guessing create another column in the WORKFLOW_STATUS table called RETRY_ATTEMPT and set some limit before marking it Failed)
#3 Is the EVENT_LOG Table a correct design and what datatype(clob or varchar(2048)) should I be using for exceptionlog? Every step/retry attempts will be inserted as a new record to this table.
#4 How to reset/restart a FAILED entry after a dependent service is back up.
Please direct me to an blogs/videos/resources if available. Thanks in advance.
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Answer
You describe an Enterprise Integration Pattern with enrichments/transformations from REST calls and stateful aggregation of the results over time (consequently meaning many such flows may be in progress at any one time). Apache Camel was designed for exactly these scenarios.