Windows Workflow provides extensible and scalable tracking features to capture and record information about workflow execution. A tracking service uses a tracking profile to filter the information it receives about a workflow. The WF runtime can send information about workflow events, activity state changes, rule evaluations, and our own custom instrumentation data. The tracking service decides what it will do with the data it receives. The service could write tracking data to a log file, or save the data in a database. The tracking service can participate in transactions with the workflow runtime to ensure the information it records is consistent and durable.
Note
You might wonder how tracking information is different from the trace information we saw earlier in the chapter. Both features expose detailed information about important events inside the workflow runtime. However, tracking information is exposed through an API specialized for Windows Workflow. We'll also see...