Managing Snapshot Deactivation in IBM BPM 7.5.1.1

In IBM BPM 7.5.1.1 ( Fixpack 1 ), the behaviour of the Deactivate Snapshot command / process has changed.

By default, any running instances will be, effectively, locked, so that they can no longer be used, although they won't actually be terminated.

This is the default for 7.5.1.1, whereas, apparently, in BPM 8.X, the default behaviour is back to the former i.e. active snapshot instances will continue to be usable, although ( of course ) new instances cannot be started.

The behaviour can be reversed, by adding two lines into 100Custom.xml, and restarting the AppTarget cluster: -

<block-deactivated-snapshot-favorite-progression merge="replace">false</block-deactivated-snapshot-favorite-progression>
<block-deactivated-snapshot-task-progression merge="replace">false</block-deactivated-snapshot-task-progression>

Note that it is vital to add merge="replace" or the setting will stay set to true which isn't cool :-)

This Technote ( for WLE 7.2.0.4 ) provides more detail on the change: -

Executing an in-flight task for a deactivated snapshot in WebSphere Lombardi Edition (WLE) V7.2.0 Fix Pack 4

Having changed the default behaviour, I can now continue to progress instances for deactivated snapshots, although ( of course ) I cannot spawn new instances.

:-)