0462 Governance Action Processes¶

The types on this page describe how to create reusable "templates" that are used to drive governance actions in open metadata. There are two approaches:

• A governance action type describes a single step action.
• A governance action process describes a sequence of steps in a process flow. The process flow is defined in open metadata so that it can be shared with processing engines throughout the open metadata ecosystem.

In Egeria, the Open Governance Service provides services for defining governance action types and process flows and is responsible for converting each step in the flow into an engine action when the process executes.

GovernanceActionType entity¶

The GovernanceActionType entity describes a type of call to a governance service running in a governance engine. The engine to call is defined using the GovernanceActionExecutor relationship. When the governance action type is used to initiate some activity, it results in the creation of an Engine Action to control the call to the governance service running in the linked governance engine.

It inherits from Referenceable and so has a unique name (qualifiedName) and additionalProperties attributes. In addition, this type adds:

• domainIdentifier links the action to a specific governance domain.
• displayName - human-readable name for messages and user interfaces.
• description - description of the governance action that is taken.
• waitTime - the minimum number of minutes that the engine action should wait before starting. This is in addition to any requested start time from the initiating user.

GovernanceActionExecutor relationship¶

The GovernanceActionExecutor relationship identifies the governance service that will run when the engine action is started.

• requestType - identifies the governance request type that links to the governance service in the governance engine definition.
• requestParameters - additional request parameters to pass to the governance service when called.
• requestParameterFilter - lists the names of the request parameters to remove from the requestParameters supplied by the caller.
• requestParameterMap - provides a translation map between the supplied names in the requestParameters and the names supported by the implementation of the governance service.
• actionTargetFilter - lists the names of the action targets to remove from the supplied action targets.
• actionTargetMap - provides a translation map between the supplied name of an action target and the name supported by the implementation of the governance service.

TargetForActionType relationship¶

The TargetForActionType relationship identifies an element that should be passed to the engine action as a TargetForAction when it is started. The caller may also add additional action targets. It has the following attribute.

• actionTargetName is an identifier used by the resulting governance service to determine how to use the associated element.

GovernanceActionProcess entity¶

The GovernanceActionProcess entity is the root of the governance action process. It gives the process its unique name and defines the first step through the GovernanceActionProcessFlow relationship.

GovernanceActionProcess inherits from Process so that it can be linked into the governance program as a technical control. See the GovernanceProcessImplementation relationship. It adds the domainIdentifier attribute to link the process to a specific governance domain.

GovernanceActionProcessFlow relationship¶

The GovernanceActionFlow relationship defines the first GovernanceActionProcessStep to run in a governance action process. It includes an optional guard attribute that can be used by the processing engine for logging and predefined requestParameters to pass to the governance service when called.

GovernanceProcessStep entity¶

The GovernanceActionProcessStep entity defines a governance action process step. This represents a step in a governance action process. Its attributes provide a template for initializing an engine action when the step in the process runs.

GovernanceActionProcessStep is a GovernanceActionType and so has all of the attributes of that type of entity. In addition, this type adds:

• ignoreMultipleTriggers - indicates that a governance action should only be triggered once from this governance action process step, no matter how many times the appropriate guards are produced. This is important for long-running governance actions that may be triggered by multiple instances of previous steps but is held waiting for the mandatory guard.

NextGovernanceProcessStep relationship¶

The NextGovernanceProcessStep relationship identifies the next step in the process flow.

• guard - identifies the guard produced by the previous step that will cause this step to execute.
• mandatoryGuard - indicates that this guard must be produced before the follow-on step is processed.

The follow-on action runs when all of its mandatory guards are produced by previous steps. It runs as many times as a matching guard is produced unless ignoreMultipleTriggers is set in which case it will run once for that guard.

GovernanceActionProcessInstance entity¶

The GovernanceActionProcessInstance entity describes a running instance of a GovernanceActionProcess. It is linked to its process using the ProcessHierarchy relationship.

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