September 14
Windows Workflow Foundation: some details
Hi,
I chatted with a WWF guy at the lab. He gave me some insights into the architecture of WWF.
- WWF is an in-process workflow technology that deals purely with CLR types. It does not resemble BizTalk in terms of pipelines, XML messages, or persistence.
- Think of WWF as a code-generation framework.
- Hosting WWF in your application is easy and lightweight. From the point of view of the host, instantiating a workflow is akin to instantiating a CLR type using a factory pattern. You can wire up to the events and properties that the workflow exposes.
- WWF will ship with WinFX, and be usable with Visual Studio 2005.
- The designer surface can be hosted in your application, not merely in Visual Studio. As suggested in the day-2 keynote, consider allowing your end-user to customize the application using the workflow designer.
- The rules engine is shared with BizTalk. It is common knowledge that the BizTalk 2004 rules engine can be used in-process, since it is implemented simply as a managed assembly. WWF uses the same bits, but not the same XML schema for persisting the rules.
Looks like great technology.
Update: BizTalk post-2006 will use Windows Workflow Foundation. BizTalk will presumably come to focus on rich adapters, hosting, and persistence.
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