What Does ‘Check the Server Logs for a Detailed Message’ Mean in Workflow BPA?

I’d like to share a lesson I’ve learned. If you’re dealing with a string that exceeds 2000 characters, it’s crucial to clear it before the end of a Workflow/BPA.
 

The Full Story:

I received an error: “An exception occurred in the persistence layer. Please check the server logs for a detailed message and the entire exception stack trace.” In the server log, oData.log, there is an error: ORA-12899: value too large for column “IFSCAMSYS”.“ACT_HI_VARINST”.“TEXT_” (actual: 2344, maximum: 2000). This seems to be a limitation within Camunda.

This was because during a REST call, I encountered a very long string.

However, @kamnlk showed me a workaround. ACT_HI_VARINST is a table used to store historical variables. The TEXT_ column has a limit of 2000 characters. But it gets populated at the end of the process. So, if we set the string to an empty string before finishing the workflow, it bypasses the issue:

execution.setVariable("strResponse", "")

Please note that execution.removeVariable("strResponse") will not work in this case.

This problem seems to be only related to strings, as binary data like JSON objects are not stored in the ACT_HI_VARINST.TEXT_ column.

For more information, you can refer to the following links:

• IFS Tech Docs
• Camunda User Guide

A big thank you to @kamnlk for the support and the suggested solution.