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## Version / Effective Date

Certain workflow objects in a process definition are marked with a version number so that more than one version of the object can be in use at any one time. These objects are:

- Activities--notifications, functions, and processes

> Note: Although function activities support versioning, the underlying PL/SQL code does not, unless implemented by your developer. You should avoid adding references to new activity attributes or returning result lookup codes not modelled by existing activities in your PL/SQL code.

- Activity attributes

- Process activity nodes

- Activity attribute values

- Activity transitions

If you edit and save any of the above objects in Oracle Workflow Builder to the database, Oracle Workflow automatically creates a new version of that object or the owning object by incrementing the version number by one. If you save edits to any of the above objects to an existing file, then the original objects are overwritten. If you have a process instance that is still running and you upgrade the underlying workflow definition in your Workflow server, the process instance continues to run using the version of the workflow object definitions with which it was originally initiated.

An effective date controls which version of a definition the engine uses when executing a process. When you edit a process, you can save it with an immediate or future effective date. Any new process instance that is initiated always uses the version that is specified to be effective at that point in time. See: Opening and Saving Item Types.

Note that Oracle Workflow does not maintain versions for other workflow objects. Any modifications that you save to the following objects overwrites the existing definition of the object:

- Item attributes

- Messages

- Lookup types

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