TimelineScenarioIntroduction.md

Timeline scenarios

Timeline scenario allows combining multiple timeline scenario actors in a parallel, sequential or custom order.

There are three core types of timeline scenario actors:

• Timelines
• TimelineRunnable which is an extension of Runnable
• Swing-specific TimelineSwingWorker class which is an extension of SwingWorker.

Additional types of timeline scenario actors can be added in the application code by implementing the TimelineScenario.TimelineScenarioActor interface.

To create a custom timeline scenario, use the following APIs of the TimelineScenario class:

• public void addScenarioActor(TimelineScenarioActor actor) adds the specified actor
• public void addDependency(TimelineScenarioActor actor, TimelineScenarioActor... waitFor) specifies the dependencies between the actors

Timeline scenario kinds

There are three built-in timeline scenario kinds that address the most common dependencies between the actors:

• TimelineScenario.Parallel runs all the actors in a parallel fashion
• TimelineScenario.Sequence runs the actors one after another in the order they have been added
• TimelineScenario.RendezvousSequence allows simple branch-and-wait ordering. The rendezvous scenario has a stage-like approach. All actors belonging to the same stage run in parallel, while actors in stage N+1 wait for all actors in stage N to be finished. The RendezvousSequence.rendezvous() marks the end of one stage and the beginning of another.