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Windows Workflow 4. Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation 4 in VS 2010. Philip Nelson http://panmanphil.wordpress.com Science Officer PAi panmanphil@yahoo.com. Why Are We Here?. I am interested how to coordinate people and systems to get stuff done Each on their own timelines
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Windows Workflow 4 Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation 4 in VS 2010
Philip Nelson • http://panmanphil.wordpress.com • Science Officer PAi • panmanphil@yahoo.com
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
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
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
More Information • http://www.delicious.com/panmanphil/workflow • 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 • panmanphil@yahoo.com