Ron Jacobs
Windows Workflow Foundation
Windows Server AppFabric–Reading the Monitoring Database from a Web Application
If you want to read the AppFabric Monitoring Database from a Web Application your web app will have...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 04/27/2011
Distributed System Versioning Myth #1
One rather large pain point with distributed systems is versioning. There are things you can...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 04/13/2011
Visual Studio 2010 Version Selector fails to Open SLN files
I have a tool that I created to help me package sample applications for the web. It removes...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 04/11/2011
WF4 Versioning Spike: Planning for Change
In my investigation of versioning issues with Windows Workflow Foundation I’ve come to one important...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 04/11/2011
WF4 Workflow Versioning Spike
Today I’m starting on another spike project. So far there are only questions to investigate,...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 03/30/2011
WF4 – How to Cast in VB Expressions
If you are a C# developer using Workflow you might not know how VB does type conversion. Imagine...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 03/30/2011
WF4 How To Invoke a Child Workflow as XAML
Recently somebody asked me how a workflow could invoke another workflow that is loaded as XAML from...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 03/29/2011
ASP.NET WF4 / WCF and Async Calls
How should you use WF4 and WCF with ASP.NET? Download Sample Code - Windows Workflow Foundation...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 03/16/2011
WF4 Workflow Services–Can you use the Same Operation more than once?
Thanks to Jean-Sebastien who contacted me with this question. Imagine you have the following service...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 03/09/2011
AppFabric WCF Service Template (C#)
Now available Download the AppFabric WCF Service Template C# Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 03/09/2011
AppFabric WCF HTTP Service Template
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft’s unified programming model for building...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 03/03/2011
WF4 Performance Tip–Cache Activities
When you create a new WorkflowConsole application you will see a line of code like this 1:...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 02/12/2011
WF4 Workflow Episodes
I remember at PDC08 when Kenny Wolf was introducing WF4 he said a workflow is kind of like a college...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 02/08/2011
WF4 Collection Activities and Object Equivalence
This morning while reviewing sample code I ran across the collection activities. Working with...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 01/22/2011
WF4: How to Unit Test a Workflow that calls a WCF Service
“The important point is that our test can’t control what that dependency returns to our...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 01/20/2011
WF4 Workflow Service Data Validation Design
In my previous previous post on the WCF Fault Spike and the other post on 4 Tenets of Service...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 01/18/2011
WCF Spike FaultContract, FaultException and Validation
Ready to have some fun… Today I spent the day investigating WCF FaulContracts and FaultException and...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 01/14/2011
WF4: How Tracking Helped Me Write a Better Unit Test
This morning I’ve been working on how to support cancelling a workflow via a...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 01/13/2011
WF4 Versioning Spike: How To Unit Test Activity Versioning
With the work I’ve been doing on versioning I’ve had to write unit tests that verify the behavior I...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 01/12/2011
Assembly.Load, Version Numbers and Unsigned Assemblies
Never assume anything, test everything All these years I assumed that Assembly.Load() would respect...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 01/12/2011
WF4 Versioning Spike: IIS Hosted Workflow Services
In my previous post, I’ve been exploring how changing the version of an ActivityLibrary affects a...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 01/10/2011
WF4 Activity Versioning Solution
In my last post I showed you how the _XamlStaticHelper class uses different semantics when loading...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 01/08/2011
WF4 Spike: Activity Versioning, GAC and Loose XAML
In agile software development, a spike is a story that cannot be estimated until a development team...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 01/07/2011
Workflow on Windows Azure Research
Our team is busily working on some great new stuff to bring first class support for Workflow to...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 01/06/2011
endpoint.tv - A Better State Machine Driven WPF UI
I couldn't leave this one alone. While I was making the last episode I said that there was possibly...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 01/03/2011
New Release Microsoft.Activities.UnitTesting 1.71
Just posted a new release of Microsoft.Activities.UnitTesting This release incorporates the Task...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 12/24/2010
Book Review: Windows Workflow Foundation 4 Cookbook
Andrew Zhu works for Microsoft in Shanghai and has been using WF4 since the very early days. ...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 12/16/2010
WCF and AppFabric Auto-Start
Auto-start is a really cool feature of Windows Server AppFabric. Recently I was asked about how you...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 12/09/2010
How to consume a WCF Service from a WF4 Workflow
Recently I saw a message on the WF4 Forum where someone was asking for help learning how to consume...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 12/08/2010
New WF4 Caching Activities for Windows Server AppFabric
I’m happy to announce that we have just posted a “Labs” release on our...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 12/07/2010
TechEd Europe 2010 Sessions Now Available
I had a great time in Berlin speaking at TechEd Europe. The recordings are now available...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 11/18/2010
WCF How To–Configuration Based Activation
I was there when this feature was born. It’s a long story but basically the idea is that you...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 11/17/2010
WCF WebHttp Service returns HTTP 415 “Unsupported Media Type”
When I was developing my demos for PDC10 I ran into a problem. I was using some new HTTP...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 11/01/2010
Interesting Twist on Auto starting a Workflow with IIS / AppFabric
Pablo Castilla contacted me about his take on auto starting a workflow with IIS and AppFabric. WF...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 10/21/2010
Want to Learn Windows Workflow 4 (WF4)?
Here are some great resources to get you started. Intro the WF4 Hands On Lab Intro to Workflow...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 10/13/2010
Goodbye Evangelist, Hello Program Manager
For the last 5 years I've been a Technical Evangelist in the Developer & Platform Evangelism...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 10/08/2010
endpoint.tv - AppFabric Caching vs. IBM eXtreme Scale benchmark
Greg Leake has been at it again. He has emerged from his lab with the latest results of...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 10/07/2010
endpoint.tv - WF4 Activities, Callbacks and Event Handlers
Suppose you want to create a workflow that needs to wait on a CLR event or callback. In this episode...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 10/01/2010
Cool things are happening down under
Two of my favorite places to visit are Australia and New Zealand. Recently I heard from some...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 10/01/2010
WF4 Activities and Callbacks / Event Handlers
Recently David K contacted me through my blog and shared with me a solution that he came up with for...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 09/28/2010
How To Unit Test Workflows–Mocking Activities
Suppose you want to unit test a workflow that has some external dependency like a database, web...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 09/24/2010
How to Unit Test a WorkflowService
Testing WorkflowServices is harder because you have to host the service somehow. There are several...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 09/13/2010
How to Unit Test WF4 Workflows
Recently I asked you to vote on topics you want to see on endpoint.tv. Coming in at #3 was this...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 09/07/2010
How to make the WF4 Batch Worker Autostart
Today on endpoint.tv I showed how to create a workflow service that can do background work on a...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 09/01/2010
The Problem of Versioning
The voting on our site What do you want to see on endpoint.tv is moving along nicely. Yes we...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 08/30/2010
What do you want to see on endpoint.tv?
This morning I awoke to a bright sunny day and thought to myself… What shall I do today?...
Author: Ron Jacobs Date: 08/24/2010