Channel 9 - Entries tagged with WF

Workflow TV - Building Multiple TargetFramework Version Libraries

Ron Jacobs — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:58:01 GMT

Imagine you want to create a library that supports different versions of .NET. Of course there are multiple ways to do this but this is the technique that I have adopted for my CodePlex projects. In this episode I'll show you the sample project I used to test out my targets files and how it works.

Ron Jacobs
twitter: @ronljacobs
blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs

Workflow TV - Activity State Management

Ron Jacobs — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:45:11 GMT

What do you do if you want to store state in an activity? Use a field? Be careful—you can get into trouble. In this episode, I show you the right way to manage state in Workflow Activities using Variable.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4) - Activity State Sample

Ron Jacobs
http://www.ronjacobs.com
Twitter: @ronljacobs

Workflow TV - Workflow Services Security

Ron Jacobs — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:08:10 GMT

Wondering how you can secure your Workflow Service? On this episode, I'm joined by Dave Cliffe who explains how Workflow Security works with WCF Security.

Links:

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - XAML and Activity Assembly Spoofing

Ron Jacobs — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 07:00:00 GMT

What happens to a Workflow if an attacker can lure the workflow host into running XAML which references an assembly replaced by the attacker? This is what I call an Activity Assembly Spoofing attack. On this episode I'll show you how it can happen, what you need to know about the security model and what you can do to prevent it.

Links

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - How To Build Workflow Services with a Database Repository

Ron Jacobs — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 22:49:37 GMT

Customers often ask me

How can I store my Workflow Service definitions (xamlx files) in a database with IIS and AppFabric?

On this episode I'll show you how you can create a VirtualPathProvider that enables you to build a Workflow respository with a database.

Links

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

AppFabric.tv - Threading with Jeff Richter

Ron Jacobs — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:15:09 GMT

Years ago I did one of my first podcasts with Jeff Richter, and later I took his advanced threading class, which was fantastic. Jeff really helped me to understand threads, thread pools, and why async is so important when building server side code. In this episode, Jeff joins me to bring you up to speed on threads, threading, and async so you can build really fast and efficient server apps.

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - New Stuff in Microsoft.Activities v1.8.3

Ron Jacobs — Fri, 27 May 2011 00:53:54 GMT

Microsoft.Activities.Extensions is a library of cool stuff for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4). You can add Microsoft.Activities.Extensions to your project using NuGet. In this episode I'll show you how we've updated the InvokeWorkflow activity to support tracking of child workflows and the new WorkflowArguments class which you can use with the C# dynamic keyword to easily create and manipulate dictionaries of arguments for your workflows.

Update: 12/3/11 Microsoft.Activities has been renamed to Microsoft.Activities.Extensions

Links

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - WF4 in the Real World - Microsoft Support ASP.NET MVC Wizard Framework

Ron Jacobs — Wed, 11 May 2011 19:43:52 GMT

Wizards are a part of the web.

Maybe you haven't thought of them as wizards, but multi-step processes such as checkout or registration are utilized by many websites. In this episode, Muhammad Usman from the Microsoft Product Quality team will show you the new system they are building to create product support wizards with Windows Workflow Foundation. In the past, even simple changes to a support wizard required a coding project. With ASP.NET MVC and WF4 together, support analysts will be able to author a self-help wizard using a custom built authoring tool and deploy it to the web as a XAML workflow.

Sample Code from this episode

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4) - ASP.NET MVC2 Wizard Activity Sample

Workflow TV - Microsoft.Activities, Unit Testing and Nuget

Ron Jacobs — Sat, 07 May 2011 02:19:39 GMT

Our friends in the ASP.NET team have built a very cool infrastructure known a Nuget. It is a really great way to bring libraries that you want to use into your project. When I first saw it I thought I've got to find a way to deliver WF4 activities and designers into your project. On this episode I'll show you how you can quickly add Microsoft.Activities.Extensions or Microsoft.Activities.UnitTesting into your project.

Update: 12/3/11 - Microsoft.Activities has been renamed to Microsoft.Activities.Extensions

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - Advanced WF4 State Machine

Ron Jacobs — Thu, 05 May 2011 14:25:17 GMT

If you want to get deep inside State Machine and understand how it works this episode is for you. I'm going to show you the details of how it schedules, executes and cancels child activities.

For more see

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4) - Workflow Services and Auto-Start

Ron Jacobs — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:15:41 GMT

Have you ever wanted to create a Workflow that starts when the system boots, does some work and at the same time responds to query and stop messages? In this episode I'll show you the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4) - Workflow Services and Auto-Start sample which shows you just how to do this.

Links

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - WF4 State Machine Hands On Lab: Exercise 4

Ron Jacobs — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:56:24 GMT

In this episode I'm going to show you exercise 4 of the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4) - Introduction to State Machine Hands On Lab. In this exercise we implement the Main Menu scenario where we will use an inner state machine. For more information on the State Machine activity see Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Platform Update 1

State Machine Hands On Lab

Getting Started (Video)
Exercise 1 - States (Video)
Exercise 2 - Card Inserted Scenario (Video)
Exercise 3 - PIN Entry (Video)
Exercise 4 - Implement the Main Menu (Video)

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - WF4 State Machine Hands On Lab: Exercise 3

Ron Jacobs — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:52:09 GMT

In this episode I'm going to show you exercise 3 of the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4) - Introduction to State Machine Hands On Lab. In this exercise we implement the PIN Entry scenario where we will deal with scenarios like PIN entry timeout and cancellation. For more information on the State Machine activity see Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Platform Update 1

State Machine Hands On Lab

Getting Started (Video)
Exercise 1 - States (Video)
Exercise 2 - Card Inserted Scenario (Video)
Exercise 3 - PIN Entry (Video)
Exercise 4 - Implement the Main Menu (Video)

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - WF4 State Machine Hands On Lab: Exercise 2

Ron Jacobs — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:27:09 GMT

In this episode I'm going to show you exercise 2 of the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4) - Introduction to State Machine Hands On Lab. In this exercise we implement the Card Inserted scenario with a focus on State Transitions. For more information on the State Machine activity see Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Platform Update 1

State Machine Hands On Lab

Getting Started (Video)
Exercise 1 - States (Video)
Exercise 2 - Card Inserted Scenario (Video)
Exercise 3 - PIN Entry (Video)
Exercise 4 - Implement the Main Menu (Video)

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - WF4 State Machine Hands On Lab: Exercise 1

Ron Jacobs — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:50:54 GMT

In this episode I'm going to show you exercise 1 of the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4) - Introduction to State Machine Hands On Lab. In this exercise we will focus on States and Entry / Exit actions. For more information on the State Machine activity see Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Platform Update 1

State Machine Hands On Lab

Getting Started (Video)
Exercise 1 - States (Video)
Exercise 2 - Card Inserted Scenario (Video)
Exercise 3 - PIN Entry (Video)
Exercise 4 - Implement the Main Menu (Video)

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - Getting Started With WF4 State Machine

Ron Jacobs — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:26:38 GMT

The Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4) State Machine activity has officially shipped in the .NET Framework Platform Update 1 bits. In this episode I'll show you what you need to download to get started using the State Machine and the new State Machine Hands On Lab

State Machine Hands On Lab

Getting Started (Video)
Exercise 1 - States (Video)
Exercise 2 - Card Inserted Scenario (Video)
Exercise 3 - PIN Entry (Video)
Exercise 4 - Implement the Main Menu (Video)

To download the .NET Framework Platform Update 1, there are two options.

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Platform Update 1 – Design-time Update for Visual Studio 2010
SP1 (KB2495593) which includes Visual Studio updates and framework updates
Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Platform Update 1 (KB2478063) for .NET framework updates

Happy Coding!
Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - WF4 Workflow Versioning Spike Project

Ron Jacobs — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:53:19 GMT

Versioning is a hard problem. I have to admit I've been slow to address this but I've finally had enough. We have to come up with some kind of solution for you. At this point I don't have the answers worked out but I decided to take you with me on this journey of discovery.

For more information see this blog post

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - Parent / Child Workflows

Ron Jacobs — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:34:48 GMT

Suppose you have a workflow that needs to call another workflow. How do you do it? In this episode, I show you how to do so by using the InvokeWorkflow activity of the Microsoft.Activities project.

For more info see this blog post

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs http://twitter.com/ronljacobs

Workflow TV - Troubleshooting WF4 Workflow Services with Microsoft.Activities.UnitTesting

Ron Jacobs — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:14:15 GMT

I recently received an email from an endpoint.tv viewer asking a question about why his Workflow Service didn't work properly. He sent me a repro and I could see that it wasn't working right but it was difficult to know why.

In this episode I'm going to show you how you can use Microsoft.Activities.UnitTesting to understand what is going on under the covers by using tracking to learn why this application didn't work as expected.

Ron Jacobs
http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
Twitter: @ronljacobs

endpoint.tv - Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform

Ron Jacobs — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:06:31 GMT

Have you ever noticed that there are often several products or solutions available when you want to solve a problem with the Microsoft platform, and so you aren't sure which is the right fit? With AppFabric, for example, there's a fair bit of overlap between BizTalk and Workflow.

Luckily, a group of guys who make a living helping people solve these types of problems wrote a book that I think you might find useful. Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform is definitely worth a read. On this episode, I chat with two of the authors—Rama and Ewan—as they explain what they have learned about solving real world problems with the Microsoft Platform.

endpoint.tv - WCF Contract First with WSCF.blue

Ron Jacobs — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:25:31 GMT

Do you need to create WSDL contracts and WCF Services from XML Schema (xsd)? If so, you need to know about WSCF.blue, an addin brought to you by some terrific developers, including Santosh Benjamin Muthiah, Edward Bakker, Alex Meyer-Gleaves, Christian Weyer, and Buddhike De Silva. In this episode, Santosh (Benjy) will show us how WSCF.Blue works and how you can add it to your toolkit.

Update Nov 17, 2010

I'm sorry to say that Santosh Benjamin Muthiah died on Nov 15th 2010. Our thoughts are with his family and colleaugues as they endure through this time of loss.

Ron Jacobs
blog http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
twitter @ronljacobs

What do you want to see on endpoint.tv?

Workflow TV - How to test activities and workflow services with XamlInjection

Ron Jacobs — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 18:55:45 GMT

In our last episode I showed you the Contoso HR sample application. The Submit Application workflow coordinated database updates, sending of email and multiple web service calls. How can you unit test a workflow like this? You don't want to update databases and send email when testing but you want to be sure that the conditions and correlation queries are correct.

The WorkflowTestHelper project now features XamlInjection which allows you to inject mock activities into the XAML when testing. In this episode I'll show you how I tested the Submit Application workflow using XamlInjection.

Ron Jacobs
blog http://blogs.msdn.com/rjacobs
twitter @ronljacobs

What do you want to see on endpoint.tv?

Navigating through the hypes, Software architectures and patterns to help avoiding your projects to crash. (Dutch)

Matthijs Hoekstra — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:01:00 GMT

When it comes to .Net software development, more and more frameworks enter the market. Both from Microsoft and in open source. Just think of all the very useful frameworks, such as ASP.NET MVC, Castle, WF, Entity Framework, Unity, Linq2SQL, ADO.NET Data Services, WCF, nHibernate, Spring.NET, CSLA, NUnit, Enterprise Library or ADF. Once a project chooses to apply one or more frameworks, trouble begins. What if you require additional features that aren’t implemented in the framework? What if you decide that another framework would have been better and want to switch halfway your project? What if the author of your favorite open source framework suddenly stops developing? What if the framework contains bugs or omissions? And what if a new version of the framework is released that is implemented totally different? These and many more everyday problems will cause your project to come to a halt, or at least make you perform serious refactoring. During this highly interactive talk Sander Hoogendoorn, principal technology officer at Capgemini, chief architect of Capgemini’s agile Accelerated Delivery Platform, and member of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Advisory Board, will demonstrate pragmatic software architectures and patterns that will help your projects to stay away from framework problems, and how to keep your code independent of framework choices. In his well known slightly ironic style Sander will present different models of layered architectures, and explain and use bridge patterns, managers, dependency injection, descriptors, and layer super-types. Of course, the speaker will illustrate these insightful patterns with lots of demo’s and (bad) code examples using blocks from Microsoft’s Enterprise Library, nHibernate, Log4Net, and the Entity Framework. Delegates will benefit from this talk by learning how to improve the structure and quality of their software architecture and code, and how to avoid the pitfalls of applying frameworks to .Net software development.

Deze video is opgenomen tijdens de DevDays in Den Haag in juni 2009. DevDays is het grootste evenement op het vlak van softwareontwikkeling en -architectuur in Nederland. Duizenden development professionals bezoeken dit jaarlijkse evenement om in twee dagen weer volledig op de hoogte te zijn van alle ontwikkelingen op hun vakgebied.

What's new in WF/WCF 4.0

Matthijs Hoekstra — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:24:00 GMT

.NET 4.0 brings several improvements in the areas of WCF and WF, including improved REST capabilities, a new workflow model, seamless integration between WF and WCF, and a new visual designer. It also provides the ability to author completely declarative (XAML-based) workflow services that can be more easily deployed, hosted, and managed. This session walks you through the various new 4.0 features and shows you how to write code using them today.

This video is recorded at the Dutch DevDays in Den Haag The Netherlands in June 2009. DevDays is the largest industry event for developers in the Netherlands. Thousands of professional developers visit DevDays yearly to keep in touch with the latest developments in their field.

XAML in .NET 4

Adam Kinney — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This isn't your Grandpa's XAML!

XAML in .NET 4 is much more than just a Reader and Writer and also is now being consumed by many technologies including Silverlight, WCF, WF and of course WPF. Rob Relyea and Mike Shim came by to talk about what's new in XAML for 2009 and beyond.

For instructions on how to download and install Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 check out this episode of 10-4.