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Windows Workflow Foundation, Microsoft's framework for managing workflow, is reportedly ahead of schedule and could well be available for Windows Vista next year, rather than not ready until Longhorn Server is released in 2007 as previously believed. WWF will also be made available for Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003.

Managing workflow on systems is, of course, a difficult technology to develop and implement. Automatic applications interaction, or system workflow is generally a predictable and somewhat static process. The underlying logic is well defined and consistent. Interaction between the people involved in tasks, or human workflow is far less predictable. People change their minds, generate new ideas, cancel or defer scheduled work, and use less structured information. Software technology which seeks to co-ordinate these two different forms of workflow management is quite complex, of course, and to date has favoured system worflow over human workflow. Windows Workflow Foundation seeks to introduce greater balance to the process, and will form an 'engine' upon which future software applications will be built. Office 12, Version 3.0 of Windows SharePoint Services, the Dynamics ERP, supply-chain and CRM products, and the BizTalk Server "Next" version of the Microsoft integration server will all be built on WWF.

The news that the engine itself could be available for distribution much earlier than expected is welcome indeed. Beta1 was released at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week.

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As pointed out, WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation) was one of the big announcements at PDC 2005 — Beta 1 was distributed to attendees when Microsoft first showed the technology. (news.microsoft.com)

For the historical record: the workflow runtime and programming model that was previewed in 2005 shipped as part of the .NET Framework 3.0 and became generally available alongside Windows Vista (the WinFX era). That means the capability you read about here did make it into the platform rather than staying server-only. (learn.microsoft.com)

Practical takeaway for developers: WF exposed two primary modeling styles (sequential and state-machine), a composable activity library, and runtime services for persistence and tracking — all designed so long-running, human-interaction processes could be persisted and resumed. If you are implementing approval or multi-step human workflows, favor state-machine models for event-driven paths and sequential models for predictable system flows. Use the supplied SqlWorkflowPersistenceService and the tracking services to persist state and capture execution history for debugging and auditing. (flylib.com)

Example host snippet (register persistence with the runtime):

var wf = new WorkflowRuntime();
wf.AddService(new SqlWorkflowPersistenceService(connString, true, TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1), TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1)));
wf.StartRuntime();

Enable tracking, keep activities small and side-effect-free, and externalize business logic into services — that makes workflows easier to test and evolve. Note that integration with WCF and hosting patterns improved in subsequent framework releases, so consult the versioned docs before starting a new project. (learn.microsoft.com)

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