completedstate

Completedstate is a term used in software engineering to denote the final or terminal state of an object, process, or workflow. It is commonly used in the design of state machines, workflows, and job schedulers to signal that an item has finished its lifecycle and generally requires no further processing.

In practice, a completedstate represents the point at which all necessary steps have been performed, results have been produced, and the item can be considered closed or archived. It is often implemented as a distinct state in a finite-state machine, as a flag in a data model, or as a status value in an API payload. Common representations include a state enum value such as COMPLETED, a boolean isCompleted flag, or a dedicated CompletedState object or singleton.

Characteristics of a completedstate typically include being terminal, meaning there are no meaningful outgoing transitions for the item, and immutability, which helps preserve the integrity of the historical record. systems may require that transitioning to completedstate triggers ancillary actions such as auditing, notifications, cleanup, or persistence to long-term storage. Idempotence is frequently desired to ensure repeated transitions into the completedstate do not produce duplicate side effects.

Related concepts include pending, in-progress, failed, and canceled states, as well as terminal or final states in state machines and the broader notion of an item lifecycle. Design considerations for completedstate include ensuring proper synchronization to avoid race conditions, handling time stamps for completion, and maintaining backward compatibility when extending state models.