Chapter 5. Managing workflow persistence

The SonataFlowPlatform custom resource (CR) enables persistence configuration at the namespace level. This approach applies the persistence settings automatically to all workflows deployed in the namespace. It simplifies resource configuration, especially when multiple workflows in the namespace belong to the same application. While this configuration is applied by default, individual workflows in the namespace can override it using the SonataFlow CR.

The OpenShift Serverless Logic Operator also uses this configuration to set up persistence for supporting services.

env:
  - name: QUARKUS_DATASOURCE_USERNAME
    valueFrom:
      secretKeyRef:
        name: postgres-secrets-example
        key: POSTGRESQL_USER
  - name: QUARKUS_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD
    valueFrom:
      secretKeyRef:
        name: postgres-secrets-example
        key: POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD
  - name: QUARKUS_DATASOURCE_DB_KIND
    value: postgresql
  - name: QUARKUS_DATASOURCE_JDBC_URL
    value: >-
      jdbc:postgresql://postgres-example.postgres-example-namespace:1234/example-database?currentSchema=example-workflow
  - name: KOGITO_PERSISTENCE_TYPE
    value: jdbc

When this persistence configuration is in place, the OpenShift Serverless Logic Operator configures every workflow deployed in this namespace using the preview or gitops profile, to connect with the PostgreSQL database by injecting relevant JDBC connection parameters as environment variables.

For SonataFlow CR deployments using the preview profile, the OpenShift Serverless Logic build system automatically includes specific Quarkus extensions required for enabling persistence. This ensures compatibility with persistence mechanisms, streamlining the workflow deployment process.

The SonataFlow custom resource (CR) enables workflow-specific persistence configuration. You can use this configuration independently, even if SonataFlowPlatform persistence is already set up in the current namespace.

apiVersion: sonataflow.org/v1alpha08
kind: SonataFlow
metadata:
  name: example-workflow
  annotations:
    sonataflow.org/description: Example Workflow
    sonataflow.org/version: 0.0.1
spec:
  persistence:
    postgresql:
      serviceRef:
        name: postgres-example 1
        namespace: postgres-example-namespace 2
        databaseName: example-database 3
        databaseSchema: example-schema 4
        port: 1234 5
      secretRef:
        name: postgres-secrets-example 6
        userKey: POSTGRESQL_USER 7
        passwordKey: POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD 8
  flow:

This configuration informs the OpenShift Serverless Logic Operator that the workflow must connect to the specified PostgreSQL database server when deployed. The OpenShift Serverless Logic Operator adds the relevant JDBC connection parameters as environment variables to the workflow container.

For SonataFlow CR deployments using the preview profile, the OpenShift Serverless Logic build system includes the required Quarkus extensions to enable persistence automatically.

You can use SonataFlow custom resource (CR) persistence independently or alongside SonataFlowPlatform CR persistence. If a SonataFlowPlatform CR persistence configuration exists in the current namespace, the following rules determine which persistence configuration applies:

The persistence configurations provided for both SonataFlowPlatform custom resource (CR) and SonataFlow CR apply equally to the preview and gitops profiles. However, you must avoid using these configurations with the dev profile, as this profile ignores them entirely.

The primary difference between the preview and gitops profiles lies in the build process.

When using the gitops profile, ensure that the following Quarkus extensions are included in the workflow image during the build process.

If you are using the registry.redhat.io/openshift-serverless-1/logic-swf-builder-rhel8:1.35.0 to generate your images, you can pass the following build argument to include these extensions:

$ QUARKUS_EXTENSIONS=io.quarkus:quarkus-agroal:3.8.6.redhat-00004,io.quarkus:quarkus-jdbc-postgresql:3.8.6.redhat-00004,org.kie:kie-addons-quarkus-persistence-jdbc:9.102.0.redhat-00005

When you are using SonataFlow with PostgreSQL persistence, you can initialize the database schema either by enabling Flyway or by manually applying database schema updates using Data Definition Language (DDL) scripts.

Flyway is managed by the kie-addons-quarkus-flyway runtime module and it is disabled by default. To enable Flyway, you must configure it using one of the following methods:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  labels:
    app: example-workflow
  name: example-workflow-props
data:
  application.properties: |
    kie.flyway.enabled = true

apiVersion: sonataflow.org/v1alpha08
kind: SonataFlow
metadata:
  name: example-workflow
  annotations:
    sonataflow.org/description: Example Workflow
    sonataflow.org/version: 0.0.1
spec:
  podTemplate:
    container:
      env:
        - name: KIE_FLYWAY_ENABLED
          value: 'true'
  flow: ...

apiVersion: sonataflow.org/v1alpha08
kind: SonataFlowPlatform
metadata:
  name: sonataflow-platform
spec:
  properties:
    flow:
      - name: kie.flyway.enabled
        value: true