Camunda 8.8 Data Retention Behavior for Active Parent Process and Child Process Instances

Camunda 8 Topics
1

We are currently using Camunda 8.8 Self-Managed and have a question regarding data retention behavior for parent and child process instances.

From the documentation, I understand that hierarchy-aware retention was introduced in Camunda 8.9, where child process instances and decision instances are retained as long as the root process instance remains active.

My question is regarding Camunda 8.8, where this feature is not available:

  • If a root process instance is still active, can its completed child process instances (e.g., call activities or subprocesses) be removed by the retention mechanism once they reach the configured retention period?

  • Is there a possibility that the parent process remains active while historical data for child process instances is deleted?

  • If so, what is the recommended approach to prevent the loss of child process data until the root process instance is completed?

We would like to understand the exact behavior in 8.8

2

In Camunda 8.8, retention is per process instance (not hierarchy-aware), so completed child process instances can indeed be cleaned up independently once their own retention period expires, even if the root process instance is still active — this hierarchy-aware behavior was only introduced in 8.9. I found the following relevant resources:

Does this help? If not, can anyone from the community jump in? :waving_hand:

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