NetFx3

Calling Workflow Services without Add Service Reference

By Maurice de Beijer

Sometimes you just don’t want to do an Add Service reference in the client application but still be able to to call a WF4 workflow service. The good thing is that a WF4 workflow service is just another WCF service from the client perspective so almost everything you can do with a regular WCF service you can also do with a workflow service. And calling the service without doing an Add Service Reference first is one of those things. In these examples I am going to use the default workflow service template just to make it easy to get started. … Continue reading Calling Workflow Services without Add Service Reference

Workflow 4 and Visual Basic expressions

By Maurice de Beijer

Note: This blog post is written using the .NET framework 4.0 Beta 2 When using Windows Workflow Foundation 4 you often need to enter expression in some activity property. The new thing is these expressions are all in the Visual Basic dialect regardless of what language you project is in. So when developing a project in C# the expressions are sill in Visual Basic. Weird right? Well not really when you think about it! After all power business users are expected to be able to modify workflows. And guess what their favorite tools are. That would be Microsoft Excel and … Continue reading Workflow 4 and Visual Basic expressions

Nederlandse CodeCamp 2009

By Maurice de Beijer

Op 21 november 2009 organiseren de SDN, Stichting dotNed en VBcentral samen het derde Nederlandse Code Camp. Dit is een dag lang met code, code sharing, freaking en gezellig samenzijn. Een evenement door ontwikkelaars, voor ontwikkelaars. De regie ligt voor een belangrijk deel bij de deelnemers! Het aantal plaatsen voor deelnemers is wel beperkt tot maximaal 150. Wacht dus niet te lang met beslissen want voor je het weet is er geen plaats meer. Vergeet bij je aanmelding niet op te geven welke onderwerpen je interesse hebben. Bovendien nodigen we iedereen graag uit om zelf een sessie in te vullen. … Continue reading Nederlandse CodeCamp 2009

Sending your own objects to a WF4 workflow

By Maurice de Beijer

In the previous two blog posts (here and here) I showed how to create and expose a Windows Workflow Foundation 4 workflow via WCF and have both a workflow and a regular C# client work with it. But the parameter and return value where real simple with just a string each. So how about passing some more complex data.   To show how to do so I will replace the singe string with a person object. Admittedly not the most complex person with only an id, first and last name and their birth date but enough to demonstrate the principal. … Continue reading Sending your own objects to a WF4 workflow

Using Windows Workflow Foundation 4 Receive from an non WF client

By Maurice de Beijer

In a previous blog post I described how to use the WorkflowServiceHost and host a workflow with a Receive activity that waits for WCF messages. I also added a WF4 client that called the service and received a response. However a lot of clients out there are not going to be workflows but “regular” code that calls into out workflow. So what does it take to have a simple console application talk to our WF4 service?   The first thing we need is an service contract describing the operation we can call. In our workflow the operation is named “Operation1” … Continue reading Using Windows Workflow Foundation 4 Receive from an non WF client

What does Windows Workflow Foundation 4 mean for existing workflow developers?

By Maurice de Beijer

  The question of what Windows Workflow Foundation version 4 means for developers currently developing using WF recently came up. As I mentioned before WF 4 is a complete rewrite and doesn’t use any of the existing WF 3 classes. The design of WF 4 is even quite different from the design of WF 3.   So are WF 3 developers completely left in the dark and have to start from scratch? And what about their existing applications, will they still run on .NET 4 or are they stuck in .NET 3.5 until the end of times?   Fist of … Continue reading What does Windows Workflow Foundation 4 mean for existing workflow developers?

Want to download all MIX sessions?

By Maurice de Beijer

Then you should check Mike Swanson’s blog post here. He has two batch files, the first downloads all MIX session recordings with in the format you like, the second renames them so it is easier to make sense of all the media file names. If you just want a list of all sessions with download links this page might be the thing for you. So much better than downloading them by hand. Not as good as going to the MIX itself but if you, like me, couldn’t go it is still a nice way to see all the content. Enjoy!

Software Development Event march 30th

By Maurice de Beijer

Just one week to go to the next Software Development Event. The schedule with all the sessions is looking good. But this time there is even more! We will have a Microsoft Surface machine somewhere in the common area for people to try our. And if you have never played, oops tested, with a Surface machine before this is a truly exiting machine! Just goes to show, the SDN will go to extraordinary efforts to please all attendees [:)] You can see the full schedule here. And don’t forget, we are not in Ede this time but in a great … Continue reading Software Development Event march 30th