The Wicked WorkFlow

A strange bug struck me few days back and I had this idea of making a single workflow interact with multiple applications ( Hosts) at the runtime . Now I might sound a little stupid here while proposing the idea, but yeah I had invested(waisted) two long days just trying to get through this weird idea. Before I drop this proposal, I would be PACIFIED to make people know that this is not possible. A workflow runtime that basically is the engine thta loads the workflow can have one and only one instance inside one application domian. As a workflow needs a Host to sit and execute the loaded workflow, its obvious that there should be a application( windows, web, console) running somewhere to make this engine work. Well, as most of us playing around in this DOTNet world know that one application domain can have just one application thread running at one point in time, its not at all possible to make the workflwo hosted inside one application or for that matter inside one application domain to interact with another application running in some other application domain, untill and unless it is killed from one appl domain and rehosted in some other application domain. So persistance( loading and unloading of workflw from the running workflow runtime) of the workflow though possible in one application domian is not a feasible across application domains. Haveing reached to that conclusion, I am curious to know why such an arhcitecture ?????

Implemented the State Machine

I have just finished with implementing the pilot version of the application that I had proposed with Windows Workflow. The concepts are now much more transparent to me than they were in the beginning. There are various trade offs, that I have observed as a part of the implementaion process. I am presently thinking about various enhancements possible to the pilot version. Now I want to find out if its possible at all to call one state activity from another state.

WIndows Workflow Foundation

I have lately joined a financial services company as a senior dotNet devleoper. I am now analysing the systems used by the organisation for processing secured and unsecured loans. Till this time the business analysts have been using a custom built application for manipulating the rules used by the loan process. The buisness has now proposed to migratethe system and I as a developer has proposed the idea of using WWF for the new implementation . The Business Analysts ar little wary of the fact that their life might be tougher with the new system and they won't have the enough technical knowlwedge to play with the rules. From what I have known the windows workflow, it should still be possible to the upload the rules into the system from XML files and the manipulation will still be easy.