Book Image

Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 Cookbook

By : Andrew Zhu
Book Image

Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 Cookbook

By: Andrew Zhu

Overview of this book

Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 (WF) is a significant part of .NET Framework 4.0. WF makes workflow technology available to every single programmer that uses the .NET Framework 4.0. It is easy to create long running and distributed programs using WF with the right knowledge. With this book, you will discover that working with workflows is easy. This book provides both step-by-step recipes and relevant background information. It covers all the important aspects of Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0. The best thing about this book is that all recipes are based on real-world experiences of Andrew Zhu. Andrew is a global WF and BizTalk technology support engineer for Microsoft. This book covers everything you need to know, when working with workflows. Get to grips with flow control activities, messaging, and transaction processes with easy to understand steps followed by explanations. You will quickly learn to use collection and custom WF activities and WF services.You will see recipes that illustrate integration of Windows Workflow with other applications such as WPF, ASP.NET, WCF service.Lastly, you will discover how easily you can customize W4 Designer with WF rule engine and others.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Foreword
Preface
Index

Using a persistence participant to persist additional data


When the workflow instance is persisted, some additional data may need to be persisted along with the workflow instance. For example, in web applications, different HTTP requests are initialized by different people. So, to make sure our workflow instance is aware of its owner, we should store the user information along with the workflow instance.

Getting ready

We need to make sure we have finished the task of Loading a persisted workflow from the database, which we have seen earlier in this chapter.

How to do it...

  1. Create a workflow project:

    Create a new Workflow Console Application under solution Chapter06 and name the project as UsingPersistenceParticipant.

  2. Create a custom persistence participant:

    Add project references to System.Activities.DurableInstancing and System.Runtime.DurableInstancing. Add a new code file to project and name the file MyPersistenceParticipant.cs. Fill the file with the following code:

    usingSystem.Activities...