Windows Workflow Foundation and Work flow

Windows Workflow Foundation and Work Flow

Windows workflow foundation provides a set of .NET classes and services for highly skilled developers enabling elementary workflow capability. It was targeted for developers and does not cater to needs of business analyst. WF is intended to be used for any kind of workflow-based application. It provides a workflow engine, a standard set of activities for defining workflows, and a graphical designer to help developers create workflows and their own custom activities. Windows Workflow Foundation comes with a set of general purpose activities for defining workflows. This base activity library provides the ability to define control flows using familiar constructs such as IF/ELSE and WHILE loops. It also includes a rules engine, support for communicating with other software using web services, and more. Windows Workflow Foundation also provides functionality to create the custom activities focused on a particular problem space. The workflows in the custom activities can be combined with those in the base activity library to create workflows. The creators of custom activities are also free to completely ignore Windows Workflow Foundation's base activity library—there's no requirement to build on top of them. Windows Workflow Foundation workflows can be written directly in code. Workflows can also be defined graphically, with code added where required. To make this possible, Windows Workflow Foundation provides the Workflow Designer, a tool that allows developers to create and modify workflows. The Workflow Designer can also be hosted in, and customized for, other environments. An ISV that wishes to include workflow within its own offering might host this tool directly inside that product, giving it whatever look and feel is appropriate. Similarly, an organization that wished to provide a way for information workers to create and modify workflows could host the Workflow Designer within a more business-friendly environment than Visual Studio. ISVs are also free to create other graphical design tools for working with Windows Workflow Foundation workflows—using the Workflow Designer isn't required

What Windows Workflow Foundation does not provides?

Just as important is what WF does not provide: direct support for human workflow, such as task lists or forms creation, or direct support for system workflow, such as adapters and data transformation. WF is solely focused on defining and executing the workflow logic itself, and it’s meant to be useful for both human and system workflow. It’s also important to note that WF provides no host process for workflows, leaving this up to the application developer. WF offers no built-in support for fault tolerance, management, deployment, or other useful aspects of an enterprise application. As its name suggests, this technology is focused on just one thing: workflow