Essential Windows Workflow Foundation (Paperback)

~ (Author), Bob Schmidt (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

“Something big is about to happen….”
–From the Foreword by Don Box, Architect, Microsoft Corporation

 

 “If I were writing a Workflow book, this is what I would have written. The material is very well presented with code examples and explanations. Also, I love how the authors discuss the underlying architecture, enabling me to get a really deep understanding of the technology to efficiently design and build my own projects.”

–Jeffrey Richter (http://Wintellect.com)

 

“Explicit support for workflows in a lightweight framework is a major contribution. Many tough problems traditionally faced by application authors, such as state management in the presence of long-running activities (think weeks or months!), can be addressed systematically by adopting

a workflow approach. Dharma Shukla and Bob Schmidt present the workflow technology under and made accessible by the new workflow foundation in the .NET 3.0 framework, and they do so in an approachable and yet authoritative way that is truly enjoyable.”

–Clemens Szyperski, software architect, Microsoft Corporation

 

 “The Windows Workflow technology combines declarative programming and state machines in a very rich and powerful way, one that is bound to have a profound influence on the way we program in the coming years. In the style of the classic Essential COM by Don Box, Dharma and Bob have done a great job making this technology accessible to any developer already versed in C#, VB, and the .NET Framework, and who wants to achieve declarative enlightenment. Don’t miss out.”

–Joe Duffy, program manager, Common Language Runtime (CLR) team, Microsoft Corporation

 

 “I think WF should and will be used as the main application model for web service applications. Developers working on web services will want to learn about this technology from this book; it comes straight from the source and explains the technology well and in depth.”

–Krzysztof Cwalina, program manager, Microsoft Corporation

 

 “This book provides an enlightening exploration of Windows Workflow Foundation for both the novice and the veteran alike.”

–Nate Talbert, software design engineer, Microsoft Corporation

 

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is a groundbreaking approach to writing and executing programs. WF programs are assembled out of resumable program statements called activities, which provide encapsulation of both domainspecific logic and control flow patterns reflective of real-world processes.

 

In Essential Windows Workflow Foundation, two WF lead architects–Dharma Shukla and Bob Schmidt–offer an under-the-hood look at the technology, explaining the why and not just the how of WF’s key concepts and architecture. Serious WF developers seeking details about how to effectively utilize and extend the framework by writing activities will find cogent explanations and answers here. With simple and illustrative examples, the authors demonstrate exactly how to leverage WF’s extensible programming model to craft domain-specific programs. Drawing on their unique vantage point in designing and developing WF, Shukla and Schmidt deliver authoritative coverage of

• The core concepts and ideas that form the heart of WF’s programming model
• The execution model for activities, with details of the activity automaton, bookmarking, scheduling, and the threading model of the WF runtime
• Advanced execution concepts, including activity execution contexts, transactions, persistence points, passivation, fault handling, cancellation, compensation, and synchronization
• Hosting the WF runtime in applications
• The activity component model, with details of validation, compilation, serialization, and visualization
• Databinding, XAML, dependency properties, and WF program metadata
• Declarative conditions and rules, activity designers, and designer hosting
• Custom control flow patterns ranging from simple sequencing and iteration to more complex graphs and state machines
• Dynamic editing of running WF program instances

Essential Windows Workflow Foundation is the definitive resource for developers seeking an in-depth understanding of this novel technology.

 

Dharma Shukla is an architect at Microsoft working on next-generation programming models. A founding member of the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) team, Dharma played a key role in defining the architecture of WF. Bob Schmidt is a senior program manager at Microsoft working on next-generation programming models. Since 2003, his primary focus has been on the design of WF. Both authors have been involved with the WF project since its inception, and have been responsible for specifying, designing, and developing large portions of the technology.

 

Contents

About the Authors xiii

Foreword xv

Preface xvii

Acknowledgments xxi

1 Deconstructing WF 1

2 WF Programs 33

3 Activity Execution 53

4 Advanced Activity Execution 111

5 Applications 179

6 Transactions 241

7 Advanced Authoring 259

8 Miscellanea 325

Appendix A Activity Automaton 395

Appendix B Control Flow Patterns 397

Index 435

About the Author

Dharma Shukla is an architect at Microsoft working on next-generation programming models. A founding member of the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) team, Dharma played a key role in defining the architecture of WF. Bob Schmidt is a senior program manager at Microsoft working on next-generation programming models. Since 2003, his primary focus has been on the design of WF. Both authors have been involved with the WF project since its inception, and have been responsible for specifying, designing, and developing large portions of the technology.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (October 13, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321399838
• ISBN-13: 978-0321399830
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #423,100 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #19 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Microsoft > Development > Foundation Classes
  #54 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Software > Business > Workflow
  #93 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Microsoft > Development > .NET

• This item is part of The Microsoft .NET Development Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is good stuff, January 25, 2007

By	Jeffery Zhang (Redmond, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This isn't a cookbook, if it were, it would've say so in the title. It does have plenty of examples, and quite interesting ones at that. I would recommend reading the foreword and absorbing its message before starting the book itself. The programming techniques used in WF have been around for a long time. Anyone who have ever written code in a programming language that supports continuations would find the concepts quite familiar. For me the first few chapters really helped tie the concepts of WF to what I already know. After that it was easy to understand the rest.

If you don't know what continuations are, there are a lot of tutorials and attempts at explaining it on the web. Many web frameworks (Seaside, Cocoon, Uncommon web, etc) are designed around it. WF is Microsoft's crack at a continuations framework.

If you know what continuations are, you will find this book very straightforward.

Bookmarks = Continuations
Consider only the case of single threaded execution (The WF execution model is single threaded), program execution can be thought of as a sequence of actions. In this sense it's like the pages of a book. A bookmark/continuation can be associated with each action in the sequence, so if you need to unload the program from memory (like while waiting for some event that won't happen for a while), you can store the bookmark in a database and restart from exactly where you left off, without having to flip through the previous pages.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Workflow under the hood, December 12, 2006

By	Joshua Reuben (Israel) - See all my reviews

This book describes what is under the hood of WF, elucidating the elegance of its design. It is not a WF cookbook or WF design pattern guidebook. It will tell you the mechanisms by which the activities and runtime services work.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book cannot be your 1st WF book, BUT it must be your second one!, February 18, 2007

By	Ali Moeen (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am writing this review in February 2007, and at this time there are not many options for WF related books.

This book goes seriously deep into Windows Workflow Foundation concepts. The book explains important concepts beyond API calls such as Activity Oriented Programming, Resumable Program Statements, Bookmarks and many more.

Beside the concepts, the book provides lots of practical solution for real life problems. For example I like the solution that this book suggests for synchronizing the Activity thread and UI threads in WinForm applications (Page 204).

I read couple of negative feedbacks for this book and I can guess the reason. This book shouldn't be used to begin and learn Windows Workflow Foundation. However, you will be fascinated by this book if you already know WF well.

In essence, there are resources on MSDN that help you to learn the surface of WF programs in a few days. This book is an excellent resource to take your WF knowledge into the next level.