In a business process, the values included in a message and the values used in the business can be maintained as variables. Variables include global variables and local variables, which are defined in the Define Business Process window in the development environment. The following table describes the roles of variables.

Table 3-6 Roles of variables

Variable	Description
Global variable	A global variable that is in the single process instance can be referenced from anywhere. Also, because the value of the variable is recorded in the database even when the process has been completed, the progress status of the entire business process can be analyzed. The variable name is unique within a process.
Local variable	A local variable can be referenced within the declared scope. When the declared scope terminates, the value of the variable is also deleted from the database. Therefore, local variables can be used to temporarily reference values such as condition judgment during execution of the process. The variable name is unique within a scope. The same variable name can be declared for different scopes. However, when referencing a variable, the variable declared in the innermost scope at the reference location is referenced.

For details about the variable definitions, see 5.5.1 Defining variables in the Service Platform Basic Development Guide.