Workflow Foundation .NET 4.0 not quite the cousin of Workflow Foundation 3.0/3.5 - Zlatan's Blog [MVP SharePoint]

Workflow Foundation .NET 4.0 not quite the cousin of Workflow Foundation 3.0/3.5

Check this out, it appears that WF 4.0 is a completely new framework, not related in any way to WF 3.0/3.5.

Good news is that you can still use old 3.0/3.5 activities as long as you wrap them in a interop activity.

Now this is not really bad news, reality of the situation is that, albeit I (think I) am maybe one of the biggest fans of WF (and many months ago this was my first .NET 3.5 certification) and there is quite a bit of us out there, I found that most junior and intermediate developers find it difficult to understand and they're quick to give up on it from the start, even some (not just a few) senior developers seemed scared of it.

This implies that curent version of WF is not the most approachable framework, and good people in MS decided to do something about this, I expect WF .NET 4.0 to be much more approachable and more RAD, so lets see how it plays out.

Published Monday, December 01, 2008 8:04 PM by Zlatan
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Comments

# Workflow Foundation .NET 4.0 not quite the cousin of WF .NET 4.0

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Monday, December 01, 2008 9:54 PM by DotNetKicks.com

# re: Workflow Foundation .NET 4.0 not quite the cousin of Workflow Foundation 3.0/3.5

I do believe complexity and confusion is not because it's hard but because the name is confusing to it's purpose. It's not a workflow engine in the purest sense and the name implies that is what it is.

I wonder if this change is not a pre-step in aligning it to work with Oslo/M?

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 8:52 AM by Robert MacLean

# re: Workflow Foundation .NET 4.0 not quite the cousin of Workflow Foundation 3.0/3.5

I don't quite understand why anyone ever think that, at least anyone who knows what a workflow engine is. WF was never a workflow engine but a workflow framework. Workflow engines (like the ones in Livelink, Documentum, Filenet... etc) for the most part don't require any development at all and are meant to be used by business users, not technical people and developers.

Framework is pretty much the opposite (although the result is the same.

Regarding Oslo (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong here) as far as I know WF 4.0 is one of its underlying technologies.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 9:35 AM by Zlatan

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