Question

We are in the process of selecting a workflow solution for a company that uses Microsoft products end to end. Given the news on WF4, in that it seems to be essentially a rewrite of previous versions, is it a wise move to back the current version or should we be looking elsewhere?

Ie – is the current version so bad that we would not be wise to try and use it?

Answer 1

Haiving just launched a project which .NET 3.5 and workflow I’d say that the current release of WF is good enough to use and run with. It has helped us to get a product out quickly (we have the usual feature creep and requirements changing weekly). However, I have a list of complaints with it:

• The workflow designer will drive you insane because it is so slow (in certain circumstances) and re-arranges your state machines as it sees fit.
• There is no built in upgrade strategy for keeping your old workflows running once you do a bug fix release. If you are going to use WF think carefully how to do upgrades early.
• Itegrating with WCF (the send and recieve activity) hide the WorkflowRuntime from you this makes it very difficult to understand what is going on on the hood.
• Its not easy to unit test them. There are ideas out there but none seemed particulary easy when we started this WorkFlow Unit Testing

I like the ideas and potential of Workflow based development, however I am not in a hurry to repeat this experience and would probably stick without it for long running processes. One place I would use it again would be in a short, complicated process (like a rules engine for working out prices).