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Coming improvements to ASP.NET hosting of Windows Workflow Foundation after WF Beta 2.2

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The DefaultWorkflowSchedulerService is the out-of-box Windows Workflow Foundation scheduler used by the runtime to execute workflow instances on new CPU threads.  These threads are leveraged from the.NET thread pool associated with the host application. This works well unless the workflow runtime is hosted in ASP.NET.  Because of the limited thread resource in the IIS server, we would be allocating an additional unnecessary thread to execute the workflow instance for every HTTP request that required workflow execution. The ManualWorkflowSchedulerService was developed to address this issue by allowing the thread that is processing the HTTP request to execute a workflow instance. Unfortunately in WF Beta 2.2 and prior, it didn’t handle the correct processing of timer events (i.e. delay activities).
 
After customer feeback, the WF team has modified the ManualWorkflowSchedulerService class to enable the creation of a background thread that handles timer events. These events are normally generated by delay activities. This behavior can be configured via a parameter called UseActiveTimers=”true” or by using a new ManualWorkflowSchedulerService constructor.  This new behaviour makes WF a good candidate for both web page flow control scenarios and for implementing business logic in ASP.NET applications. This functionality was added after beta 2.2 was released. 
 
Until the next public drop of Windows Workflow Foundation bits, our suggestion is to use the DefaultWorkflowSchedulerService for ASP.NET applications as a temporary solution for getting things up and running. It will work as expected, but it should not be expected to scale well in an ASP.NET application. By the time you need to deploy your solution, we should have released a new version of WF with the new ManualWorkflowSchedulerService functionality. At that point, you could swap the WorkflowScheduler in your config file. 
 
This new functionality will still require you to explicitly call the RunWorkflow(…) method on the ManualWorkflowSchedulerService after calling the StartWorkflow(…) or EnqueItem(…) methods in the ASP.NET code. However, timer events will be processed as expected, automatically, without having to make any explicit calls.

Thanks to Israel Hilerio, who is the program manager responsible for hosting on the Windows Workflow Foundation team. He provided much of this information for me.

Samples for Windows Workflow Foundation and ASP.NET

Scroll down to Technology Samples where you'll find an ASP.NET hosting sample.
https://www.windowsworkflow.net/default.aspx?tabindex=4&tabid=49

Jon Flanders has a sample of User Interface Page Flow in ASP.NET
https://www.masteringbiztalk.com/blogs/jon/PermaLink,guid,0fae3e73-7801-4cf6-a5a5-9370b0f99973.aspx

Dino Esposito writes about using ASP.NET with workflow
https://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/04/CuttingEdge/

This forums post from Tom Lake provides some helpful hints
https://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=358078&SiteID=1

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Update July 5th, 2006: Since the RC2 is now available here in the June CTP of .NET Framework 3.0 (formerly WinFX), you should upgrade to that and use the ManualWorkflowScheduler for ASP.NET workflow applications.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2006
    I really like what the on10 guys did with the on10 website. The login UI is the best I've seen and I...
  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2006
    From WindowsWorkflow.Net:

    Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 2.2 is now available for download on MSDN...
  • Anonymous
    May 02, 2006
    If you are using a state machine workflow in ASP.NET you need to use the ManualSchedulerService. ...
  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2006
    The following links to .NET resources have been collated over time with the assistance of colleagues. ...
  • Anonymous
    May 15, 2006
    Voici un autre post publié par Paul Andrew traitant des amélioration apportées pour les application ASP.NET...
  • Anonymous
    May 31, 2006
    Can you please let me know how to use SqlTarckingService  in WWF beta 2.2 with ASP.NET 2.0 to store information like userid, etc and let me know how to fetch the state of that particular user.
    It will be fine if you provide some sample.

    Thanks and Regards,
    Jai
    Email: ngchandran@yahoo.co.in
  • Anonymous
    June 23, 2006
    Get your bits here! There's a new CTP is available, and this includes an RC (Release Candidate) build
  • Anonymous
    October 01, 2006
    PingBack from http://windowsworkflow.wordpress.com/2006/10/01//
  • Anonymous
    December 06, 2008
    Nie war es einfacher auf unseren Seiten, seine eigene Homepage zu bauen.