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How does Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) compare to product X?

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I get asked this question a bit from people who have heard of WF but have not read much about it. This applies to BizTalk Server 2006, Office SharePoint Server 2007, SourceCode K2, Skelta, Captaris, other BPM products, etc. Here's how I explain it. I'll try to avoid the million analogies that could be used here.

WF is a software developer technology

  • It's the programming model, engine and tools for building workflow-enabled software on Windows
  • It gives software developers a model driven tool which is higher level but still integrated with .NET code
  • It's seriously extensible to enable a wide range of software development projects that require process execution or business logic execution
  • It's targetted at Independand Software Vendors (ISVs) both Microsoft products and external product developers. We spend a lot of time planning the features for this audience
  • It's been successfully used by many MS products and customer projects despite only being released in Nov 2006

WF is not a software product

  • It doesn't have a server process that you can directly run in a data center, you have to build this or integrate with IIS
  • It doesn't have administrative tools, reporting tools, management tools or monitoring tools. We have some samples for these that you can work into your softwareproducts
  • The workflow designer is best suited to developers, not business analysts. Though I have heard of some projects using our designer with a business analyst buddying with a software developer and our designer is freely redistributable.
  • It doesn't have tools that IT Pros need or end users need. It's focussed only on what software developers need

To review WF is a great technology for building software that has process, workflow or business logic requirements. Software products can benefit from this by using a common low level engine and focus on implementing business value for their users. But don't think WF is a product you can directly deploy for an end customer.

Build versus Buy

Instead of asking whether you want to use WF or some product for your solution. I would recommend another question. Ask yourself whether you want to build a software development project or whether you would prefer to buy software from a vendor. WF is a technology that you could use to build the software yourself and by releasing it as part of the .NET Framework Microsoft has essentially made the build argument stronger. But we also made WF available for ISVs who are building the products you might otherwise consider. And that means they can build on top of it to provide all the higher level features and business value that isn't in WF.

Related Questions

I'll try to answer these in later posts. Feel free to comment on this post with other questions about WF you might have.

  • How does WF work with process related software products?
  • What types of software development is WF best suited to?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 16, 2007
    I get asked this question a bit from people who have heard of WF but have not read much about it. This

  • Anonymous
    January 16, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 17, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 17, 2007
    Era da tempo che macinavo l'idea di scrivere questo post e finalmente....eccolo. Il titolo è, se volgiamo,

  • Anonymous
    January 17, 2007
    Thanks so much for the links Paul. They seem to be really good. Yeah I mean Windows Workflow foundation (not wildlife fund :). I have a few books in my list, though yet to purchase atleast one of them... Foundations of WF: an Introduction to Windows Workflow Foundation (Expert's Voice in .Net) (Paperback) by Brian Myers Essential Windows Workflow Foundation (Microsoft .NET Development Series) by Dharma Shukla and Bob Schmidt (Paperback - Oct 13, 2006) Programming Windows Workflow Foundation: Practical WF Techniques and Examples using XAML and C# by K, Scott Allen (Paperback - Dec 21, 2006) Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation Step by Step (Pro Step By Step Developer) by Kenn W. Scribner (Paperback - Mar 28, 2007)(aint released yet) Any suggestions which on these books? Cheers moredotnet

  • Anonymous
    January 18, 2007
    Hello, Is it something similar to Oracle Workflow? regards, Chandu

  • Anonymous
    January 18, 2007
    Hi Paul, Great post. I have a technical question about WorkflowMarkupSerialization. I hope you can help me. I have a BaseActivity with a DependencyProperty named "Comment", it's a string. Also I have other activity named CompositeActivity, it's a SequentialSActivity. I put the BaseActivity inside the CompositeActivity. If I, programmatically, create a SequentialActivityWorkflow and add the CompositeActivity and I set the Comment property to "It's a comment", and I serialize using WokflowMarkup, I lost the value of the property. The result is something like:  <SequenceActivity x:Name="SequenceActivity" ...    <ns0:CompositeActivityx:Name="requestActivity1" />  </SequenceActivity> How can I serialize and preserve the value of the property. I want to save the XOML to after create the workflow when the user request for that? Thank you for your attention. Daniel Oliveira.

  • Anonymous
    January 19, 2007
    Thanks for the post, Paul.  I am sharing it with many prospects, customers, and members of my user group! Pat pkeating at greystone.com

  • Anonymous
    January 21, 2007
    Paul Request you to please push the publishers. There is no book on Windows workflow foundation available in India yet. Inspite of so many Developers being here. Regards moredotnet

  • Anonymous
    January 27, 2007
    Hi Daniel Oliveira, I can't quite follow what your problem is. I'd recommend you expand on what you're doing and the symptoms on the WF Forums on MSDN. See http://www.windowsworkflow.net/forums Regards, Paul

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2007
    我们在上次的文章已经提及了WF工作流不是一个终端用户的产品。在这篇文章里我想表明一下我的观点：开发人员到底应该使用WF来干嘛？WF是.net3.0框架中的一个新技能，开发人员必须在他们创建的解决方案使...

  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2007
    I'm working in a project using sharepoint 2007, is the first time I use share point and in the project we need to trigger different infopath forms in a single state workflow depending in a initial condition and I want to know if it is posible or what can I do?. I have been searching around and haven found nothig. The only thing I think know is to creat a single work flow for each form and make a master workflow to manage wich sub workflow is called.

  • Anonymous
    March 05, 2007
    If you have some questions regarding BTS and WF and when to select one, the following may be useful:

  • Anonymous
    May 28, 2007
    Siguiendo con el rescate de algunos de los posts publicados en nuestro blog , en este post voy a hacer

  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2007
    很久之前就为VS2005打了WF，但最初的想法是很单纯，以为就像VS创建一个Windows应用程序一样，创建WF也一样拖拖控件，一句代码也不用写就可以完成，但实际操弄起来，发现完全不是这么一回事，虽然...