Summary

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) provides a large assortment of activity objects that let you model all kinds of workflow applications. By providing a framework in which to work, it lets you build and modify these types of applications relatively quickly and safely.

Because WF is a tool for managing potentially complex applications, by necessity, it is complex, too. This chapter doesn’t have room to give more than a brief overview of WF so that you can get some idea of its capabilities, but the sequential workflow example should give you some of the basic flavor.

For more information on WF (including overviews, technical articles, tutorials, and samples), go to the Microsoft web site. Two good URLs to search are msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms735967 .aspx and msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa663328.aspx.

WF is a new tool included in the .NET Framework 3.0 to make building certain kinds of applications easier. Chapter 31 describes another similar tool that makes building service-oriented applications easier. It helps you build secure, robust applications that use services much as some applications use web services today.