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 the Parallel activity


In this task, we will create a sample that will use the Parallel activity. The Parallel activity can execute its child activities in parallel, asynchronously.

How to do it...

  1. Create a workflow project:

    Create a new Workflow Console Application under solution Chapter02 and name the project as UsingParallelActivity.

  2. Create a workflow:

    Open Workflow1.xaml and create a workflow as shown in the following screenshot:

    Set the properties of both Delay activities:

  3. Run it:

    Set UsingParallelActivity as StartUp project. Press CTRL+F5 to build and run the workflow without debugging.

How it works...

Workflow execution starts from Sequence1, then there is a delay of 5 seconds and the execution of Parallel will shift to the Sequence2 branch immediately. Now Sequence2 will delay for 5 seconds and the execution shift to the Sequence1 branch again, and now, both Sequence1 and Sequence2 are in a delaying state. The whole Parallel activity will wait there until one of them awakes....