Pros and Cons of Process driven vs DB driven task

In my 15 years with Appian, I learned all the tiny details of how processes and user input tasks work. And this is my go-to decision. It is there, it works for 99% of all cases, and I do not have to re-invent the wheel.

Then, I had many conversations about the nature of tasks, including a recent podcast episode (https://appian.rocks/2025/04/23/episode-27-a-task-is-a-task/). And I think it is a good idea to really understand what tasks are, in process, like in a business process you discuss with the client, as well as how this translates, or not, into a user input task in Appian.

Hello  

Depends on your application design requirements and volume of instances that would be triggered and also archival policies.

Process-Driven Approach
Pros:
1. Great for workflows with tasks, approvals, and timers.
2. Built-in tracking, SLAs, and audit trails.
3. Easy and quick to understand business flow.
4. Most of the data is held in the pv's.
Cons:
1. Long-living instances
2. Data held in process instances is hard to report on sometimes.
3. More effort to maintain over time.

DB-Driven Approach
Pros:
1. Scales better and all business data is stored in the database.
2. Easier to report on and update data.
3. Cleaner and faster for high-volume applications.
4. Would help in maintaing better perfomance as short lived instances are designed.
Cons:
1. You need to build your own audit if needed.
2. More design is to be done manually as starting and ending tasks is to be designed manually

I design tasks in a way that their max age does not go beyond 3-5 days. A user must be able to either complete a task "now", or make it a follow-up so the task sleeps for a defined period. This follow-up is no active process instance, but a simple record.

This combination is a very neat solution and empowers users to manage their work load and task list.

And I also think that a task with no deadline, or a deadline of weeks or months, is probably not a good candidate for a user input task.

Stefan Helzle Konduru Chaitanya Thanks for the clarification

Stefan Helzle said:

This combination is a very neat solution and empowers users to manage their work load and task list.

I agree to this.