WF4 is a process engine, as well as a visual program language, shipped along with Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0. Traditionally, when we design a long-running application, we break a large application into lots of small code blocks to address the business logic and use a database to store the intermediate data. With the growing complexity of logic, managing code blocks and authoring logic workflows becomes difficult. Now, with WF4, we can design and create distributed, long-running programs easily.
The aim of this book is to provide a step-by-step guide to help us start WF4 programming. Every recipe in this book is runnable.
Chapter 1, Workflow Program, provides recipes that will help us understand basic information about WF4 programming.
Chapter 2, Built-in Flow Control Activities, provides recipes that demonstrate the usage of the built-in control activities.
Chapter 3, Messaging and Transaction, provides recipes that demonstrate how to send and receive WCF messages in workflow. The second part of this chapter focuses on applying transactions in a workflow program.
Chapter 4, Manipulating Collections, demonstrates how to manipulate collection data in workflow programs with WF4 built-in activities.
Chapter 5, Custom Activities, demonstrates how to create our own custom activities; the most powerful unit of workflow.
Chapter 6, WF4 Extensions, demonstrates how to use the built-in extensions such as persistence and tracking, and also how to create our own extensions.
Chapter 7, Hosting Workflow Applications, mainly explains how to host workflow applications in IIS7. This chapter also provides recipes that demonstrate host workflow in ASP.NET, WPF, and Windows Forms.
Chapter 8, Custom Workflow Designer, helps us create our own WF4 workflow designer with visual tracking function.
We need a PC having Windows Vista/7/2008/2008R2. We can also use Windows XP, but it is not recommended. .NET Framework 4.0 is a must. Once we install .NET Framework 4.0, we can run workflow applications. To develop WF4 workflow applications, we should also have Visual Studio 2010 installed on our computer. To host WF4 as a WCF service in IIS, we should install IIS7/7.5 in our computer.
If you find yourself working with Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 and you have basic knowledge of C#/.NET Framework/VB and workflow, this book is for you. It will be best if you know both C# and VB, because WF 4.0 expressions can be written only in VB (at the time of writing). With this book, you will be able to enhance your applications with flexible workflow capabilities using WF 4.0. To follow the recipes, you will need to be comfortable with .NET Framework, C# programming, and the basics of SOA and how to develop them.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "The ActivityLibrary project is for all customized activities, whereas the WorkflowConsoleApp project is used for testing our customized activities".
A block of code will be set as follows:
class Program {
static void Main(string[] args) {
WorkflowInvoker.Invoke(GetCodeStyleWorkflow());
}Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
.NET Framework 4 Full (32-bit) – silent repair
%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\SetupCache\Client\setup.exe /repair /x86 /x64 /ia64 /parameterfolder Client /q /norestartNew terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus, or dialog boxes for example, appear in our text like this: "Click the Invoke button to get the result".
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