Pro WF: Windows Workflow in .NET 3.0

by Bruce Bukovics

Windows Workflow Foundation is part of a bundle of new products that update .NET 2.0 into .NET 3.0. They are scheduled for release in January 2007. WF is particularly important as it natively integrates workflows into Visual Studio for the first time. Workflows allow you to chart both human and code interactions as a series of flow-chart diagrams, allowing you to see your code as a series of interacting elements that can move and change rather...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0108EVTZC
• ISBN13: 9781590597781
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 744 Pages
• Weight: 2.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Another satisfied customer!

This is THE nuts and bolts book for Windows WF. The author is very good at communicating his point succinctly making all 684 pages a joy to read for those interested in WF. All areas of WF are covered in good detail. You learn everything from developing a no-code workflow to developing dynamic workflow and also workflow that communicates with web services and much more. The author starts small, in the first 13 pages you develop a "Hello Workflow" app and he goes over all of the auto-generated code. From there the book takes off. One thing I really like about this book is that it really does assume you are at least an intermediate developer. You don't have to read 1/2 a page on how to create a new project, he just assumes you know how. I don't know how many times i've read an "intermediate" book that introduces collections by chapter 7 and shows you an animal hierarchy by chapter 12. For once it's nice to read a book cover to cover and just learn the whole time. The pacing in this book is perfect. It's not too hard to grasp any of the concepts as they are being presented yet it's not the type of book where you have to thumb through 1/2 the book because you already know how to declare variables and apply conditional logic. At the time of this review all reviews have been 5 stars - and for good reason. If you're a developer comfortable with C# but have no knowledge of WF then this is the book for you.

Fantastic

I just wanted to heap on the praise for this book. It is complete, well organized, well-written etc etc. If you're new to WF, I highly recommend it.

Better than attending a hands on training course

This is by far the best book in the market on WF for a programmer. If you do its programming exercises it easily replaces a 5-day hands on training course. Now that is a great ROI. The book is very easy to read and understand. I would recommend the Essential Workflow Foundation by Dharma Shukla as a companion book. This one gives an insight into what .NET 3.0 WF does in the background to make it all happen. Also if you were to try to use WF without Visual Studio, Dharma Shukla book would be the right one to pick as it does not use VS at all.

Best Workflow book available

I read through all of the available books on WF and this was definitely the best. Pro WF has a lot of practical information missing in a lot of other books. In particular, the sections on rules, exception handling, and web service hosting are worth the price of the book all by themselves. If you want to know how, and why, to use WF in your real every-day programming then this is the book for you.

Clear and Thorough

I am a colleague of the author's and recently got the opportunity to investigate using Workflow Foundation for a business application. Not knowing much about this component of .NET 3.0 and having only read some introductory material about it on MSDN, I found this book to be an excellent place to start learning it for real. This book is very clear and thorough and works through the subject in an organized and methodical way. The fact that it's written by a single author is a benefit, since it gives a more coherent treatment of the subject than some technical books written by several (or even many) people. The text includes solid examples that don't go overboard with irrelevant tangents. I was also impressed that the author tackled some of the more difficult aspects of this technology, like hosting the workflow designer in your own applications. I would recommend this to anybody who wants to get a deeper understanding of Workflow Foundation.