[touhamm]

Hi,

Why does ProcessMaker store form data in serialized arrays rather than in a table? Trying to query this data is difficult and hindering and a report table is needed.

[ashkufaraz]

Work with APP_DATA is not very difficult.
read this for work with APP_DATA
http://wiki.processmaker.com/3.0/Trigge ... le_Storage
And for report table you must create report table for your purpose.
http://wiki.processmaker.com/3.0/Report_Tables

[touhamm]

It is not difficult only if work just inside ProcessMaker itself. Try integrating with other tools and you will face problems. Sure there are solutions like report tables, they are not optimal solutions. While possible, it is not a trivial task to change a value in all existing cases.

For example, the HR department come come to you and tells you: "Hey! You made a mistake in contract name, you should correct the right name". How would you proceed then?

Also, I am just curious why is array serialization used?

[amosbatto]

Did using Report Tables solve your problem?

[touhamm]

I use it all the time. I am just curious to know more about the design and data structure.

[amosbatto]

The decision to store serialized case data in the APPLICATION.APP_DATA field was made 15 years ago when performance was not a big issue and nobody thought about doing searches in case data. We are going to change to non-serialized case data in version 4.0 in order to improve performance and make searches possible. I'm not sure how it will be implemented.

[touhamm]

Thank you for your answer.