Book Image

Programming Windows Workflow Foundation: Practical WF Techniques and Examples using XAML and C#

By : Kenneth Scott Allen
Book Image

Programming Windows Workflow Foundation: Practical WF Techniques and Examples using XAML and C#

By: Kenneth Scott Allen

Overview of this book

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is a technology for defining, executing, and managing workflows. It is part of the .NET Framework 3.0 and will be available natively in the Windows Vista operating system. Windows Workflow Foundation might be the most significant piece of middleware to arrive on the Windows platform since COM+ and the Distributed Transaction Coordinator. The difference is, not every application needs a distributed transaction, but nearly every application does have a workflow encoded inside it. In this book, K Scott Allen, author of renowned .NET articles at www.odetocode.com, provides you with all the information needed to develop successful products with Windows Workflow. From the basics of how Windows Workflow can solve the difficult problems inherent in workflow solutions, through authoring workflows in code, learning about the base activity library in Windows Workflow and the different types of workflow provided, and on to building event-driven workflows using state machines, workflow communications, and finally rules and conditions in Windows Workflow, this book will give you the in-depth information you need. Throughout the book, an example "bug reporting" workflow system is developed, showcasing the technology and techniques used.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Programming Windows Workflow Foundation: Practical WF Techniques and Examples using XAML and C#
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface

Summary


We've looked at several options available for authoring and building workflows. We've built workflows using XOML files and compiled the files both programmatically and from the command line. We also built workflow using pure code, and with code separation. When it comes time to execute a workflow, the result from each option is nearly the same. All the options ultimately produce a collection of objects in memory, and the objects maintain parent-child relationships. The workflow runtime manages the execution of the objects.

Code-based workflow definitions are perfectly reasonable to use for general-purpose, fixed workflows. When using the workflow designer, chances are we'll never have to look at the designer-generated code, and we don't particularly care if the designer is using XAML, C#, or Visual Basic code to maintain the workflow definition.

XAML-based workflow definitions open up a number of additional possibilities. If we have a workflow definition entirely in XAML we can use...