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About Gateway Types

There are four types of gateways, discussed below. When you select a type, in the Properties view of a gateway, the join conditions of the incoming and outgoing links are automatically generated for that type. For a complex gateway, you can add the join condition manually. The default gateway type is Exclusive.

Based on the join conditions of the incoming or outgoing links, a gateway can be classified as one of the following:

Inclusive (diamond with O)

The activity waits for at least one of the incoming links to evaluate to true and for the rest of the incoming links to be set with transition conditions. Any of the outbound links can have transition conditions, and any number of them can evaluate to true.

Exclusive

The default type. The activity waits for at least one of the incoming links to evaluate to true and for the rest of the incoming links to be set with transition conditions. At most, one of the outbound links must evaluate to true. If, at run-time, more than one outbound link evaluates to true, the first link executes.

Parallel (diamond with +)

The activity waits for all incoming links to evaluate to true. All outbound links are true (no transition condition is allowed out of a parallel gateway).

Complex (diamond with asterisk)

The activity waits for all incoming links to be set (either true or false) and for the join condition specified within the complex gateway to evaluate to true. Any of the outbound links can have transition conditions, and any number of them can evaluate to true.

Event-based. See Pick.

The BPEL structured activities, such as if, while, repeat until or for each easy-to-use alternatives to building decision-making with a gateway.

An exclusive gateway is a good choice as the source or target of a loop-back links. For details, see Mutually Exclusive Transitions.

Required Properties	Optional Properties
Gateway Type	Name. See Selecting Activity Labels
	Join Condition. See Creating a Join Condition for an Incoming Link
	Suppress Join Failure. See Process Properties
	Comment. See Adding Comments to a Process
	Documentation. See Adding Documentation to a Process
	Setting Visual Properties and Using Your Own Library of Images
	Execution State. See Viewing the Execution State of an Activity or Link
	Extension Attributes and Extension Elements. See Declaring Extension Elements and Attributes.
	Mutually Exclusive Transitions