Is Windows Workflow widely used?

Question

I read a bit about the overall idea of this technology but it reminds me of a few decades ago when we were told "in the future you won't write code, you'll connect boxes in some graphical tool".

Is it a technology which has become central in .NET development (like WCF and WPF have) or has it failed to catch on?

Answer 1

I don't believe WF is that widely used; we're probably one of the few places currently using it (WF3) and we're ditching it for a simpler bespoke solution instead of migrating to WF4.

A problem is that one of the main audiences WF is aimed at is those building 'enterprise' type systems (i.e. solutions with complex long-running stateful processes) but Microsoft don't provide any 'enterprise class' hosting solution for it, and writing your own is a painful experience (been there, done that). The AppFabric stuff for WF4 looked like it could answer this issue, but ended up being nothing more than a bit of logging and persistence framework, leaving the actual hard problem of hosting completely out of the picture.

It's a shame, because WF4 looks like a great framework for building this type of application. With the right hosting it could be 'BizTalk done right' (speaking as a seasoned BizTalk developer here too). But until there's a good hosting solution out of the box, I'd expect its use to be fairly limited.

Answer 2

WF is a workflow engine, not a fully fleshed workflow application or component. You can use it to add workflow capabilities to your own application but you have to provide a user-friendly designer otherwise it is more trouble than benefit.

WF hasn't caught on until now because it was too slow, making it suitable only for heavy-duty workflows. Pageflows for example (specifying a sequence of web pages) were out of the question. Developers also had to create a lot of plumbing in order to host WF in their application. Finally, you had to create the end-user WF designer from scratch, or use Visual Studio's designer which was totally unsuitable for end users.

WF v4 is a lot faster and easier to host but you still have to build your own designer.