Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)

Mon, August 14, 2006, 02:31 AM under dotNET | dotNET
As I described previously, .NET Framework 3.0 is simply adding four elements to the released .NET 2.0 bits. While these library/framework bits are released with Windows Vista at the end of the year, the VS/tools side of things is planned for release next year with Orcas. One of the technologies however will have tool support from the start (with a VS2005 add on) and that is Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). I personally think that this will lead to WF being widely adopted earlier that the others. So if you haven't checked it out yet, now is a great time to start! Below are some online resources to help you out.

If I've missed a good WF link, drop me a line (as always from the link on the left).

1. The central official WF sites on MSDN and the NetFx3 home.

2. A bunch of articles on msdn here, here, here and here.

3. Scott has some truly great articles on his blog here, here, here and here.

4. Watch a bunch of WF webcasts. They are linked from this blog post by Paul Andrew.

5. Plenty of screencasts on channel9 and on our msdn uk nuggets page (from my colleague Mike Tauly, filter nuggets by technology "Workflow Foundation").

6. In addition to any blogs you come across from the links above, examples of good blog posts are these by: Matthew Winkler, Moustafa Ahmed, Nate Talbert and Tom Lake. Also read these on “Why WF” by: James Conard, Dave Green and Dennis Pilarinos.

7. For support, as with any other technology, head for the forums.

And remember, if you are on Windows Vista 5472, the only NetFx technology with full tool support etc is WF :-)
Check out the build matrix on Tom Archer's blog