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<delay>

Delay execution of a business process for a specified duration or until a future time.

Syntax

<delay duration='"PT60S"'/>

Or:

<delay until='"2020-10-19T10:10"'/>

Attributes and Elements

duration attribute

Optional. Specifies the duration of the delay as an expression that evaluates to an XML duration value.

For example: PT60S for 60 seconds or P1Y2M3DT10H30M for 1 year, 2 months, 3 days, 10 hours, and 30 minutes. The <delay> element ignores fractional seconds. If duration has a value less than one second, it is treated as 0 seconds.

For details on XML duration values, see appropriate entry in the Primitive Datatypes section of the W3C Recommendation XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes Second Edition, which you can view at the following:

until attribute

Optional. Specifies a future time at which the delay will expire, as an expression that evaluates to an XML dateTime value.*

For example 2023:10:19T10:10

name, disabled, xpos, ypos, xend, yend attributes

Description

The <delay> element suspends execution of a business process (or the current thread within a <flow>) for either a specified duration or until a specific time. For example:

<sequence>
  <annotation>
    <![CDATA[ Write the time now, and sixty seconds later.]]>
  </annotation>
  <trace value='"The time is: " & Now' />
  <delay duration='"PT60S"' />
  <trace value='"The time is: " & Now' />
</sequence>

The <delay> element causes the execution of a business process to pause for either a specific duration (specified by the duration attribute) or until a specific future time (specified by the until attribute). You must provide either the duration attribute or the until attribute, or no delay will take place.

During the delay period, execution of the current business process thread is suspended and the state of the business process is saved to the database.

The format for values of duration and until is discussed at length in World Wide Web Consortium documents about XML data types. For details, see the “Primitive Datatypes” section of the W3C Recommendation XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes Second Edition, which you can view at https://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#built-in-primitive-datatypesOpens in a new tab. Some duration examples are:

  • PT60S or PT1M for one minute

  • PT219S or PT3M39S for 3 minutes, 39 seconds

Whenever a <delay> element is executed, the BPL engine inserts the name of the <delay> element into the message header so that it is visible in later Message Browser and Visual Trace displays.

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