Windows Workflow usage in large web applications

Question

Although, most of the examples I checked on the Internet use WF to deal with wizard-like steps or designing a workflow-based UI, and since Windows Workflow can deal with state machines, and if we say, we have a website like Stackoverflow.com, In what areas of the application would we use the WorkFlow foundation?

Examples:

• A user's question has got 10 up-votes, give its owner a bronze badge.
• A question has just got 10,000 views, set its top_question flag.

Should these small (but there is really too many of them) events should be handled using Windows Workflow?
Is there any WF components to be placed on the top of the built-in WF to ease such operations?

Answer 1

I have yet to see a successful application build with a workflow engine like WF, BizTalk or any of the other engines out there. By successful I mean: it made it to production and the resulting application was easier to maintain than if it had been built without an out of the box workflow engine.

Udi Dahan posted a very interesting blog on the topic where he elaborates why this stuff usually only works on demos but not in real life.

To be fair, I should clarify that I do not have any hands on experience on WF, I did play with BizTalk a while ago and found it completely over the top for what I needed.