In Essential Windows Workflow Foundation, two WF lead architects–Dharma Shukla and Bob Schmidt–offer an under-the-hood look at the technology, explaining the why and not just the how of WF’s key concepts and architecture. Serious WF developers seeking details about how to effectively utilize and extend the framework by writing activities will find cogent explanations and answers here. With simple and illustrative examples, the authors demonstrate exactly how to leverage WF’s extensible programming model to craft domain-specific programs. Drawing on their unique vantage point in designing and developing WF, Shukla and Schmidt deliver authoritative coverage of
The core concepts and ideas that form the heart of WF’s programming model
The execution model for activities, with details of the activity automaton, bookmarking, scheduling, and the threading model of the WF runtime
Advanced execution concepts, including activity execution contexts, transactions, persistence points, passivation, fault handling, cancellation, compensation, and synchronization
Hosting the WF runtime in applications
The activity component model, with details of validation, compilation, serialization, and visualization
Databinding, XAML, dependency properties, and WF program metadata
Declarative conditions and rules, activity designers, and designer hosting
Custom control flow patterns ranging from simple sequencing and iteration to more complex graphs and state machines
Dynamic editing of running WF program instances
Essential Windows Workflow Foundation is the definitive resource for developers seeking an in-depth understanding of this novel technology.
