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OK guys (and girls), this something I have been thinking about for a while, and I was very interested in your feedback. I would like to create a ".NET 3.0 Blackjack game". The idea is as follows: There are a number of components to the game: The Dealer One or more Players From a technology point of view, both the Dealer and the Player could be implemented as WCF services. I want folks to be able to play the game on remote computers, so we should probably use the wsdualHttpBinding in Internet scenarios and the netTcpBinding when we are within the firewall. The "core logic" or both the Deal and the Player could be controlled by a workflow (probably a State-Machine workflow, because of the event-driven nature of the game). Note that the workflow would not make ALL decisions for you, but it would know when you are busted, when you must take another card etc. When multiple choices are open, it would let make the final decision. Same for the dealer, we could develop a workflow for him also. The User Interface of the app would be displayed on all screens, and would be controlled by the WCF services, and of course, would be written in WPF. So, clearly this is just rambling on my part, but I am very interested in your feedback. We could make this a real cool, showcase application, maybe even have it on CodePlex later. This application would easily lend itself to be "farmed out" to different contributors once the core architecture and interfaces have been defined. This game would nicely Read More...
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Workflow Services Primer What are WF Runtime Services? WF is a foundation framework which provides a number of components that together provide the necessary infrastructure to execute a workflow instance. When you take a look at the overall architecture of WF, you notice that it has been designed to be very extensible and configurable. A high level WF architecture diagram is provided below: In this article, we want to talk about the box in blue, which represents the Workflow runtime services. Runtime Services are class instances that you create and register with the Workflow Runtime during application startup (typically in the host startup code). Each service has a particular purpose within the Workflow system. Workflow Services come in two varieties: Core Services. Local Services. WF Core Services The behavior and functionality of the WF core services has been pre-defined by Microsoft. In some cases, the Workflow Runtime will register its own default implementation of a core service if you don't provide your own (a typical example is the default Scheduler Service). In other cases, the Workflow Core Service is optional and a default instance is not automatically registered for you, such as is the case for the Workflow Persistence Service. WF Local Services WF Local Services are developed by you to serve any of your current needs. One common use of local services are Local Communication Services which serve a communications conduit to and from your workflow instances. Once you Read More...
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I uploaded a WF custom activity library , which contains two activities: BackupDatabase : Performs a full or incremental backup of a database RestoreDatabase : Performs a restore of a database Both activities leverage the SQL Server 2005 System Management Objects (SMO). For details on the file contents, please refer to our downloads folder. This sample illustrates a couple of interesting concepts, specifically: Implementing a validator for a custom activity. Developing a custom Designer for an activity. Leveraging inheritance to develop custom activities. Leveraging a custom WorkflowRuntimeService to provide feedback about long-running operations to the hosting application. I am planning on writing a number of follow-up posts, which will highlight some of the more interesting aspects of these activities, so stay tuned! Read More...
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Overview In a previous article, we studied how we can externalize Windows Workflow Rules into a separate database, allowing the rules to be modified without a need to rebuild or re-deploy the application. In this post, we take a lot at how we can use WF Rules to implement simple application extensibility. For some applications, you might want to enhance the flexibility and extensibility of your application without having to invest extraordinary amounts of time in devising and testing a complicated plug-in architecture. This article will show how you can leverage WF Rules using the RuleSetService together with a minimum amount of custom code to accomplish this goal. Applying Rules to non-Workflow types Typically, Windows Workflow Foundation Rules are applied to Workflow Type, either as a Declarative Rule Condition, or as part of a PolicyActivity . Within a Rule condition and/or its associate "If" or "Else" Actions you can access the Workflow fields, properties and methods. In addition, the Rule can also access the members of objects within your Workflow class. The Rules sub-system of Windows Workflow Foundation was architected to be independent the Workflow types, and RuleSets were designed to be able to operate on ANY type, not just a type derived from System.Workflow.ComponentModel.Activity . Therefore, you can apply a RuleSet to any of the types in your own assemblies. This fact opens up some interesting possibilities. In a future post, I will present a sample that uses WF rules Read More...
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A Quick Overview of WF Rules Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) includes a flexible Rule Engine, allowing the Workflow developer to logically separate your application's business rules from the Workflow Assemblies. Rules allow you to model and implement the business requirements of your application into a set of declarative statements, which can be enforced at runtime. A WF Rule is composed out of the following three separate parts: A Condition which evaluates to a Boolean result. A Then Action which is executed if the condition evaluates to true. An optional Else Action which is executed if the condition evaluates to false. The WF Visual Studio designers include a set of Rule Editor Dialogs. These editors allows the developer to create individual rules, and combine them together into a RuleSet . Alternatively, you can use any .NET language to create the a RuleSet through custom code. Traditionally, WF Rules are used in the following two context: Within a Declarative Rule Condition . Such a rule condition can be part of an IfElseBranchActivity , a WhileActivity , or any other activity which needs to evaluate a simple or compound boolean expression. Within a Policy activity. A Policy activity evaluates a RuleSet, and applies the Then or Else actions of each Rule in the RuleSet, based upon the Rule's condition. The Rule Engine has the ability to apply forward chaining , which is a mechanism in which dependencies within rules are automatically detected, and Rules can be re-evaluated Read More...
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Hello there I'm happy coz I have got a cool concept thanks to Kavita Kamani (Program Manager, Connected Framework); everything started when I did the Travel Booking Applicatin example (available from WinFX community site) I found an extensible inteface using; then I got this question: what's the advantange of doing it by this way and not by referencing directly the appropiate project ? I supossed the first advantage it was having a less tightly coupled code but what I really liked knowing it was that this is like a service oriented pattern, I mean, what one does it's using these activities for generic communications and then implementing deatils for each service which ones will consume them. Here you can find more on HandleExternalEventActivity & CallExternalMethodActivity : Activities: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms734592.aspx Cheers Javier Caceres Read More...
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Hello everybody This entry is about my experience doing the TravelApplication lab available from http://wf.netfx3.com/files/folders/sample_applications/entry308.aspx ; the purpose of this lab is showing the use of declarative rules, the conditioned activity group and the using of HandleExternalEventActivity & the CallExternalMethodActivity; this is a big sample & Í was only running it and checking out the concepts exposed; the huge interfaces using had make me many doods I post in the relationed forum ( http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1447133&SiteID=1&mode=1 ); I think this continuoisly interface using it's coz the fexibility to handle event's and methods without "hard bounding" them . I ´ll wait for the response and I ´ll share my conclusions. Bye JC Read More...
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Hello gays I wanna write a tutorial & material for other people who is starting the speechflow dev way, so I have been playing around with WWF's samples & code from different sources for learning myself doing this kind of material; okay this entry It's about the experience of doing the Hands-On Lab (Lab Manual) called "Lab 03 – Hosting the Windows Workflow Foundation Runtime" from http://wf.netfx3.com/files/folders/documentation/entry5618.aspx . I could see 3 approaches on this lab: -Introduction to Hosting WorkFlows -Handling WWF runtime environment events -WorkFlow configuration & tracing I could did 2 of the 3 lab exercises; on the last one I got an error on this line: using ( WorkflowRuntime workflowRuntime = new WorkflowRuntime ( "WorkflowConsoleApplication1" )) According with the lab, this is where the App tells the WWF runtime where logging & tracing; I make everything according the lab but that´s work; I could not understand well ok this section and what's the SQL Server role. So I post it: http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?postid=1447061&isthread=true&siteid=1&authhash=11de027d4333c5a0a5737ea1124478a3f1738bbe&ticks=633116158499251178 When I got this solved, I´ll have it resolved enterily and I'll share you. Thanks! JC Read More...
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Jon Flanders provides an example where an activity creates and calls syncronously another workflow by using a custom service. Read More...
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The following BPMN diagram presents a situation where there is an arbitrary loop with two entry points (one before Task A and one before Task B) and one exit point (after Task C). In situations like that it is not possible to implement this loop with a WhileActivity, because the WhileActivity works only with well-structured [...] Read More...
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I expected that the transformation of a BPMN diagram to a WF workflow would be accomplished by mapping each BPMN Process to a Sequential Workflow. But, there is a structural difference between the BPMN diagram and the Sequential Workflow. The difference is that the Sequential Workflow is block-structured (i.e. all paths from a split or [...] Read More...
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(Draft, to-be-updated post)
Activities BPMN
Windows Workflow Foundation Process Sub-Process
Maps to any CompositeActivity. Loop Sub-Process
Maps to a WhileActivity. Multiple Instance Sub-Process
Maps to a ReplicatorActivity. Ad-Hoc Sub-Process Compensation Sub-Process
Maps to a CompensateHandlerActivity. Task
Maps to any atomic Activity that has only implementation semantics (e.g. CodeActivity or InvokeWebServiceActivity) Events BPMN
Windows Workflow Foundation Start Event [None] Start [...] Read More...
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John Evdemon (Microsoft Architect) notes in a recent forums post:
Regarding WF, the underlying XML representation is XAML. Why did we choose XAML instead of BPEL or some other standard? Simple - XAML enables us to avoid the constraints imposed by a focusing on a single standard (e.g. BPEL lacks human workflow and sub-processes). WF is capable [...] Read More...
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