Captain's log

Yesterday I was playing the recordings for VSLive held at San Francisco and there was a session by Paul Andrew (Technical Product Manager) on Windows Workflow Foundation.

Windows Workflow Foundation is an extensible programming model and runtime components for building solutions on the Windows platform. It supports human and system workflows. The interesting aspect is integration provided with Visual Studio (graphical means to define workflows) and the ability to embed the workflow runtime engine (provided as a library) in any windows application (be it console based, Win32 etc.).

Window Workflow Foundation looks very promising and is something to watch out for. I think addressing the workflow problems at the OS level is new and opens amazing opportunities for various vendors. I am yet to get my hands dirty with Windows WF. Hope to find some time soon.

Following are some useful links:
Windows Workflow Foundation - The Official Microsoft Windows Workflow Site
Introducing Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation: An Early Look - David Chappell
Windows Vista Developer Center - Windows Workflow Foundation
Presentation by Paul Andrew (VSLive at SFO)

The activities provided by Windows Workflow Foundation core library have a striking resemblance with "activities" in the BPEL runtime language. Here is an interesting article by David Chappell on "The case against BPEL - Why BPEL is less important than you think".