Variable scope in Process Designer

In IBM® BPM, all variables declared for a business process definition (BPD) or service are local variables.

Local variables are only accessible to the currently executing process instance or service. Because variables are unique to an individual BPD or service, you can use a variable of the same name in a nested BPD or service and there are no conflicts at run time.

A variable contains a value or references an object. Multiple variables may reference the same object. When a running process instance or service reaches an exit point, the variable's value or references may be propagated to the calling process instance or service. When a running process instance or service encounters an activity, the variable values and references may be propagated to variables within that activity. A variable that is defined as a Shared Object may persist its values at these boundaries. See Declaring and passing variables for more details.

All Process Designer variables are JavaScript objects. Process Designer uses namespaces to organize these objects and their methods. The following table describes the namespaces most commonly used during process design and development: