Beginning Windows Workflow Foundation development, Part 2

Along with our aforementioned tip, a good starting point for some introductory information is Microsoft's Hands-on Labs for Windows Workflow Foundation. This set of 10 one-hour labs, aimed at developers with at least six months of .NET programming experience, walks developers through the process of creating workflow-enabled Windows applications. Downloads are available for Visual Basic and C#.

Additional help with bringing workflow into ASP.NET applications is available in the Windows Workflow Foundation Web Workflow Approvals Starter Kit. This kit shows developers how to automate work order requests; there are separate, pre-defined roles for creating, approving and monitoring these workflows and the events within them.

One key to the success of a workflow is the ability to track events. (Think of the "human" workflow at a sandwich shop. It's much easier to determine the whereabo

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uts of a missing order when wielding a receipt adorned with an order number.)

Enter Tracking Services in Windows Workflow Foundation, a recent MSDN article that explains the framework's tracking architecture. Workflow events are tracked through the use of tracking profiles, which can be created directly in XML or through an object model. As author Matt Milner puts it:

Milner also provides some guidance regarding Windows Workflow Foundation's SQL tracker, which sends tracking profiles to SQL Server and lets programmers search for the tracking information they so desire without writing SQL queries. There are also a few tidbits of advice on creating custom tracking services. For these to succeed, Milner said, you need to first determine how tracking profiles will be created and then implement a tracking service and a tracking channel.

Finally, we offer a series of articles from K. Scott Allen, author of the blog OdetoCode.com and Packt Publishing's Programming Windows Workflow Foundation. These offer a handy introduction to the concept of workflow, how it works and what must be done to make it work.

As always, if you have Windows Workflow Foundation resources to share, send them along and we will add them to this tip.

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