Add the 'Generated' property for process actions and process variables

Hi,

The generated_by_control_proc_id column is/will be the replacement for the generated column.

We are currently in the middle of phasing out the Generated (bit) column and replacing it by the generated_by_control_proc_id (text) column. During the Generate definition process, Generated = 1 objects are deleted automatically but in the next version, that will also include the generated_by_control_proc_id generated objects (more information on that later).

Partly generated Process flows are possible but that will mean you have to be careful using the Generated = 1 on objects as objects either have to be dropped in the correct order or should not be dropped at all. The process flow in this case cannot be dropped as, like you said, it's partially generated. In a future SF release this will be easier to control as a developer.

So for what you can do now is to make your own Dynamic model control procedure creating the objects for the process flow that you desire, then fill the field generated_by_control_proc_id with the name of the Dynamic model procedure. In your procedure, you can drop the objects if needed, update if needed or insert if needed based on the value of that column. Example in pseudo-code:

delete from process_action
where generated_by_control_proc_id = @control_proc_id

delete from process_variable
where generated_by_control_proc_id = @control_proc_id


insert process_variable
   (columns)
select
   column1 = 1,
   column2 = 2,
   generated_by_control_proc_id = @control_proc_id

insert process_action
   (columns)
select
   column1 = 1,
   column2 = 2,
   generated_by_control_proc_id = @control_proc_id

With the above example you can probably figure out how the rest of the code should be structured. Do keep in mind, you don't have to drop all created objects. You can also update the values that have been changed and only drop the objects that should be deleted because a dependency has been removed for example.

That is exaclty how I’ve currently solved this. It does get tricky when generated object use the manually generated objects because it causes errors at generation. Manually generating these objects as well solves this.

The new way of generating using the  generated_by_control_proc_id in a future release seems like fantastic improvement. I look forward to using it.

Can I close the idea in that case? Since the Generated column will not be added