C# Tutorial - Windows Workflow Foundation

A workflow is one of the mechanisms used by businesses to express their business processes as a series of self-contained activities. A workflow is normally expressed either using a Finite State Machine (FSM), a Unified Modeling Language (UML) Activity Diagram or a simple Flow Chart. Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) technology complements the .NET Framework with a group of workflow-related components that allow developers the ability to define, compile, instantiate, debug, and track workflows.

A WF workflow is composed of activities which represent discreet pieces of functionality that are used to run specific business activities. Activities represent the smallest building block available to developers to extend the workflow framework. There are two types of activities:

  • Composite activities are used to express control statements (i.e., for, if-else, etc.), grouping activities that share behavior (i.e., Sequences) and reusable sub-workflows.

  • Individual activities are used to provide a mechanism for expressing single pieces of work that need to be executed in the same step in the workflow.

What follows is an example of a sequential workflow.

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