Deletion of running process fails

[SteffenMeissner]

Hi,

I have posted the same question in the Flowable forum without getting much traction on the thread (https://forum.flowable.org/t/how-to-delete-a-process/9805) so I try here once again:

Back then in Activiti and up to Flowable 6.2 the following code worked as (at least I) expected:

    RuntimeService runtimeService = processEngine.getRuntimeService();
    
    String pId = runtimeService.startProcessInstanceById (processDefinition.getId ()).getId ();
    
    System.out.println ("Process " + pId + " started");
    
    // give process some time to "do" something
    Thread.sleep (3000);
    
    System.out.println ("Deleting process " + pId);
    
    runtimeService.deleteProcessInstance (pId, null);
    System.out.println ("Process deleted");

Process 5 started Deleting process 5 Process deleted

The process starts, runs some time and then gets terminated.

The Flowable version currently in use (6.7.2), however, gives me an exception in line :

runtimeService.deleteProcessInstance (pId, null);

Concurrent update in table “ACT_RU_EXECUTION”: another transaction has updated or deleted the same row [90131-212]

The process used to demonstrate this behavior is trivial: One asynchronous ServiceTask between Start and End events. The task is a Java class simply doing a sleep ().

While I seem to understand what happens, I’m somewhat puzzled.

Is this behavior change intended? If so, what is the recommended way to delete a running process instance?

Thanks, Steffen.

[wberges]

Hello,

I have exactly the same problem.

It appears that, when an execution is running in a process, the deleteProcess generates an error and a DB rollback, meaning that the process continues (except if it crashed...). I tried to reproduce the issue with the simple workflow below:

1. delete during the timer => fails
2. delete during the running STEP2 task => fails
3. suspend during the timer => fails
4. suspend during the running STEP2 task => fails
5. cancel event during the timer => seems to work
6. cancel during the running STEP2 task => fails

So my question is the same as @SteffenMeissner : how can we stop running workflows in a 100% safe and successful way? The problem also is that the existing workflows are not designed to handle cancel events, so it would require a migration if the cancel event is the only solution (which even doesn't seem the case, depends on the current step...)

Thanks Best Regards

Here's the APP zip: test_delete_running_process.zip