Context item overview

A context item is a variable defined within the BMC Atrium Orchestrator Development Studio application. Local context items exist only within the context of process execution. Global context items can be shared across process executions, and are persisted, so their values remain unaffected by grid restarts or upgrades.

Context items are variables in a process. These variables can be different each time the process executes, but the actions performed with the variables remain constant. In a process, context items hold values to use in subsequent activities. For example, a context item can hold an error message, such as Port 80 failure, that populates the subject line of an email message when a port failure alert is generated. Each time the process executes, the error message can be different, but it always populates the subject line of an email message. Context items can be:

• Local, existing within the context of a single process execution
• Global, persisting within a grid and used by any process on that grid
• Mapped to parameters
  • Input parameters are mapped to context items to provide a process with values prior to execution.
  • Output parameters are mapped to context items to allow a value to pass from a process executed as a Call Process activity to the calling process.

This section contains the following topics:

• Context Browser
• Dynamic contexts
• System parameters
• Concepts