Work context correlation
When IBM® Digital Business Automation for Multicloud components interact with each other, trace and span identifiers define a work context.
When one IBM Digital Business Automation for Multicloud component calls in another component, for example when a IBM Business Automation Workflow case starts a BPMN process, a work context is updated and propagated between the involved components. For data scientists and business users to identify such propagation and possibly take benefit of it, the current work context is added to all IBM Business Automation Insights raw and time series events, and to summary entities.
For more information about events and summaries, see BPMN summary event formats, Case and activity summary event formats, and Reference for Decisions events.
- trace-id
- A 128-bit identifier, which represents the top-level context that encompasses all the
occurrences of the work context in an interaction. This identifier is created when the first
interaction occurs. In the example where a case starts a BPMN process, the first interaction occurs
when the case is
started.
The trace identifier is common to all events and summaries that are involved in that interaction. By using this identifier, you can easily correlate a Case event with a BPMN event that pertains to the same context.
- span-id
- A 64-bit identifier, which represents a particular work context instance within a parent-span-id field. In the example where a case starts a BPMN process, one identifier is created for the Case interactions and another one for the BPMN interactions.
- parent-span-id
- A 64-bit identifier, which points to the parent-span-id field of the work context. This identifier is null for top-level work contexts, typically for events occurring in the first component that triggered the interaction. In the example where a case starts a BPMN process, the parent-span-id field is the case identifier. For events that occur in a Case instance, the identifier is null. By using this identifier, you can easily correlate a BPMN event with the corresponding Case instance from which the BPMN event was started.