N
nightwatch77
Hello, I'd like to discuss with you my concern regarding Windows
Workflow Foundation. I hoped to use it for implementing business
processes in applications and, optionally, to provide graphical
business process designer to application users. But I was greatly
disappointed at what the creators of WWF did
1) It looks as if they provided a graphical designer for writing
normal code - there are primitives for loops, if statements, function
calls and not much more. You can create a normal program with that,
but
2) there are no business process-related primitives I expected to find
in a workflow designer. I mean tasks, actors (people that are involved
in the process), flow split and join for handling concurrent sub-
processes. Such designer is practically useless for business people -
they are unable to understand or use the process description language
provided by Microsoft because it is too low-level
3) What you are able to implement in a single sequential process is
rather limited. I doubt if it can be used for handling complex
business processes. Implementing even a simple process takes a lot of
work and results in a very complex code graph. I think it could be
used for implementing some fragments of application logic, but
definitely not business processes
4) You have to use a lot of custom code to make your process work.
Actually, you need to use custom code for everything, as the WWF
language provides only basic control structures.
5) You need to compile your workflows. That is, if you modify a
process, you need to recompile your application. Why is this a
problem? Because very often business applications need to run 24x7,
especially applications supporting key business processes. So you just
can't modify a process and keep the system running, you have to wait
until next 'system release' which takes weeks in big companies. Also,
you can't just experiment with an ad-hoc workflow and modify it live.
Business users should not modify and compile the application
themselves.
6) There is no utility for managing process definitions (modifying/
versioning/creating new/switching etc)
7) Generally, the WWF language is too low-level. You have no common
primitives to build from, so you end up implementing some custom logic
every time you need to extend a process. So, there's no possibility of
unified analysis of process definitions (validity checks), reporting &
statistics.
8) As the graphical designer is useless for business people, it's also
useless for programmers. Almost every programmer gets rid of graphical
designer as soon as he is proficient enough with the language or when
the logic grows more complex. For developers it's much easier to work
on text files - they are smaller, easier to edit and view.
Thats it for now, what do you guys think?
RG
Workflow Foundation. I hoped to use it for implementing business
processes in applications and, optionally, to provide graphical
business process designer to application users. But I was greatly
disappointed at what the creators of WWF did
1) It looks as if they provided a graphical designer for writing
normal code - there are primitives for loops, if statements, function
calls and not much more. You can create a normal program with that,
but
2) there are no business process-related primitives I expected to find
in a workflow designer. I mean tasks, actors (people that are involved
in the process), flow split and join for handling concurrent sub-
processes. Such designer is practically useless for business people -
they are unable to understand or use the process description language
provided by Microsoft because it is too low-level
3) What you are able to implement in a single sequential process is
rather limited. I doubt if it can be used for handling complex
business processes. Implementing even a simple process takes a lot of
work and results in a very complex code graph. I think it could be
used for implementing some fragments of application logic, but
definitely not business processes
4) You have to use a lot of custom code to make your process work.
Actually, you need to use custom code for everything, as the WWF
language provides only basic control structures.
5) You need to compile your workflows. That is, if you modify a
process, you need to recompile your application. Why is this a
problem? Because very often business applications need to run 24x7,
especially applications supporting key business processes. So you just
can't modify a process and keep the system running, you have to wait
until next 'system release' which takes weeks in big companies. Also,
you can't just experiment with an ad-hoc workflow and modify it live.
Business users should not modify and compile the application
themselves.
6) There is no utility for managing process definitions (modifying/
versioning/creating new/switching etc)
7) Generally, the WWF language is too low-level. You have no common
primitives to build from, so you end up implementing some custom logic
every time you need to extend a process. So, there's no possibility of
unified analysis of process definitions (validity checks), reporting &
statistics.
8) As the graphical designer is useless for business people, it's also
useless for programmers. Almost every programmer gets rid of graphical
designer as soon as he is proficient enough with the language or when
the logic grows more complex. For developers it's much easier to work
on text files - they are smaller, easier to edit and view.
Thats it for now, what do you guys think?
RG