Customer Reviews

Programming Windows Workflow Foundation: Practical WF Techniques and Examples using XAML and C#: A C# developer's guide to the features and programming interfaces of Windows Workflow Foundation

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The reader gets the feeling they are being led through a guided tour by a trusted collegue rather than a book. This volume is loadeed with little tidbits of information that the author likely had much more difficulty in discovering than you will if you read his book. Tired of WWF books that read like a marketing document? This book is definitely about the code. Whether WWF is for you or your project is your decision, but if you decide it is or you want to know more, this is a great place for a seasoned technologist to quickly acquire perspective on this emerging technology.

Every once in a while an author is able to take a subject that others struggle with but fail to make understandable, and succeeds in making so crystal clear that it seems obvious. Allen brilliantly illuminates Windows Workflow, and his book is required reading.

I have been working with WF for quite a while and one of the hardest things about this technology is getting your hands around everything it can do. Scott has done a great job of walking you through the technology in a manner that enables you to not only grasp the concepts but also get some code up and running quickly. The progression of the book was well thought out getting you started on creating workflows [Chapter 2] and then progressing through sequential workflows [Chapter 3], base activities [Chapter 4], custom activities [Chapter 5], hosting workflows [Chapter 6], State Machine Workflows [Chapter 7], workflow communication [Chapter 8] and finally rules and conditions [Chapter 9]. The thing that I like about this approach is typically in most projects you will have a team of varying roles and skills and the book in my view caters to this by tackling WF development from the perspective of a workflow developer (Chapters 1,2,3,4,7,9) early on in the book and then moving to a host developer (Chapters 5,6,8) for the final half of the book. You will notice I grouped chapters 7 and 9 in with the first half of the book since I feel these topics are very workflow developer centric and the introduction to the local communication service in chapter 3 should give you enough information to tackle these topics earlier than they are presented.

This book is a fast paced book that is designed to get you up and running quickly but at the same time is not so huge that you can't get through it quickly. It's size (233 pages) limits what you can cover but I think Scott does a good job of presenting the topics in a detailed enough manner that you can then dive into the SDK if you need to go deeper and know what you are looking for when you do. The book has all of code online at Packt Publishing which makes it easy to follow along as you read the book. I would recommend this book to someone who is new to WF and needs a book that can quickly guide them through getting started with the technology.

I read all the books on WF available. I give this 4 stars for the format, although for the real "insider" Shkula's book has it.
Some imperfections also eft me a little perplexed: for instance, the pure XAML workflow with "inline" code will not run since the code beside need to compile first (there's a good custom activity for that on the WF website).
Great work overall.

First of all this should not be a $40 book. Book is only 200 pages. This book covers the basic components of workflow but doesn't provide adequate examples of how and when to use it. Since this is a new technology I expected full fledged examples. It give little code snippets which are very helpful but lots of time I didn't know where should I put them. Book seemed like a collection of articles rather than a book.
The book did cover the topics but I expected one full example which u see in almost all books that helps you put together all the pieces.

I bought this on the strength of Scott's excellent web site, but too bad there's more on the site than in the book. The book is thin and basic.

Well as you can see the title is quite but extremely accurate. The book covers a "real world" use of Windows Workflow foundation. The author takes you through Windows Workflow Foundation by building a bug tracking application which is an ideal candidate for a workflow technology. I think this approach is what makes this book stand apart from other Windows Workflow foundation books. It is short and concise and gives you a real application of the technology. This is not a book filled with marketing fluff or the Hello World app (with the exception of the first chapter).

Overall, this book is a good read for those that want to get started in Windows Workflow Foundation.

This book brought the whole team upto speed with Workflow basics. The subject
presented is crystal clear and has helped us in a great way in implementing our project.