Download - Windows Workflow 4
Windows Workflow 4
Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation 4 in VS 2010
Philip Nelson http://panmanphil.wordpress.com Science Officer PAi [email protected]
Why Are We Here? I am interested how to coordinate people and
systems to get stuff done Each on their own timelines I am interested in graphical programming
tools that help communicate what software does to others
I am interested in programming that is more responsive to changes at runtime
Why is Microsoft here? Microsoft continues to invest in workflow.
WWF1 – 3 and now WWF4 Even though developers hate workflow
Why?
Overview Microsoft isn’t very
clear about the strategy but….
They are aligned with the rest of the very lucrative BPM industry that is trying to get more involvement from business users in system development
Overview
Today, WWF 4 is a developer tool first and foremost
Lets see some code
Tracking
Execution
Highlights Activities can be “composed” Everything is an activity Parallel execution is natural act Going idle and restoring is a natural act The designer can be hosted in other apps
and… Workflows can be loaded dynamically from
xaml
Highlights
Fast and adept up and down in scale
Challenges Though AppFabric may help, instance
management is not on par with other commercial products
Tracking remains always involves custom coding with tracking events
Challenges There is no obvious path to debugging an
existing workflow in flight, resetting it’s path or variables.
While it could be said to be an advantage, WWF4 provides nothing for end user UI
Hard to imagine managing hundreds of workflows with tens of thousands of instances
What are the essentials of workflow good design for incorporating people with
contextual information into a workflow good design for incorporating back end
systems and purchased applications into a workflow
ability to see progress of workflow in flight and manage instances (errors, restarts, escalations)
productive design environment
What are the essentials of workflow Stable Execution Environment Clear metrics of processes and performance ability to safely deploy new versions of long
running workflows
How does it stack up to other products?
How does it compare to SharePoint workflow?
How does it compare to Windows Workflow Foundation 3?
More Information http://www.delicious.com/panmanphil/workflo
w http://www.delicious.com/panmanphil/wwf4 Ron Jacobs video on channel 9 Ron Jacobs wrote a VS2010 guidance package The Problem Solver blog,
http://msmvps.com/blogs/theproblemsolver/default.aspx
MSDN samples - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd483375(VS.100).aspx
Philip Nelson http://panmanphil.wordpress.com Science Officer PAi [email protected]
