WF & WCF 4.0
The good news is that in the next version of the framework WF & WCF will be even more closely linked than in 3.5. In addition a lot of the plumbing & infrastructure code that I had to write for Rio should (in theory ;-D ) be provided for us in a new toolset codenamed “Dublin”. This is a set of tools to extend IIS & the Windows App server to allowing us to look into persisted WFs & manage them a whole lot better, especially in the case where problems occur … as with all new stuff … we’ll see !!
In addition there’s loads of cool new stuff in 4.0 that we really needed in 3.0 & 3.5 such as ……..
- Transactions can be flowed from one WF to another!
- The ability to run async calls without having to code up all the usual complexities
- True parallel Activity execution
- A new workflow type of “Flow”
- Rules aren’t xml expressions now but full blown Activities … how that’s gonna work I have no idea ! ;-D
The bad news is that they’ve completely re-written the WF Runtime & design tools from the ground up to the extent that existing (3.0 & 3.5) workflows & custom activities will have to go through a special “interop” layer.