Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is a revolutionary part of the .NET 4 Framework that allows you to orchestrate human and system interactions as a series of workflows that can be easily mapped, analyzed, adjusted, and implemented. As business problems become more complex, the need for workflow-based solutions has never been more evident. WF provides a simple and consistent way to model and implement complex problems. As a developer, you focus on developing the business logic for individual workflow tasks. The runtime handles the execution of those tasks after they have been composed into a workflow.

Pro WF: Windows Workflow in .NET 4 provides you with the skills you need to incorporate WF in your applications, using a lively tutorial style with each example illustrated in C#. This book gets you up to speed with WF 4 quickly and comprehensively. Learn about WF 4’s new designer, it’s updated programming paradigm, and the completely new set of activities that can enable and extend your workflows. This book also includes detailed coverage of how to customize your workflows and access them in a variety of ways and situations so you can maximize the advantages of this technology.

What you’ll learn

• WF 4 basics
• New activities and changes to existing activities in WF 4
• Customizing your workflows
• Accessing your workflows in a variety of ways in a variety of situations
• Using WF with Web Services and ASP.NET
• Integrating WCF and WF

Who this book is for

This book is for intermediate to advanced .NET developers who need to learn how to use the latest version of Windows Workflow Foundation (WF 4). This book is not a primer on .NET or the C# language. To get the most out of the examples presented in this book, it is necessary to have a good working knowledge of .NET 2.0 or higher. All of the examples are presented in C#.

Table of Contents

1. A Quick Tour of Windows Workflow Foundation
2. Foundation Overview
3. Activities
4. Workflow Hosting
5. Procedural Flow Control
6. Collection-Related Activities
7. Flowchart Modeling Style
8. Host Communication
9. Workflow Services
10. Workflow Services Advanced Topics
11. Workflow Persistence
12. Customizing Workflow Persistence
13. Transactions, Compensation, and Exception Handling
14. Workflow Tracking
15. Enhancing the Design Experience
16. Advanced Custom Activities
17. Hosting the Workflow Designer
18. WF 3.x Interop and Migration