What is Workflow? WWF revealed.
I've been thinking about Workflow the past few days, or more specifically what Workflow actually is. I've gotten it down to this: -
- Fill Kettle with cold water
- Turn on Kettle
- Wait for water to boil
- Transfer boiling water from Kettle into Teapot
- Wait for Tea to brew
- Pour Tea into cup
So, an innocuous list of tasks which have to be performed to make a cup of tea, many of which are in themselves workflow items, they can be broken down even more, such as the first item. "Fill Kettle with cold water" Let's look at that closely.
- Take Kettle to Taps
- Turn on Cold Tap
- Open Kettle
- Move Kettle Under Tap
- Wait for Kettle to Fill
- Turn off Tap
- Return Kettle to Work surface
Again, even some of the above tasks can be broken down even more. let's take "Turn on cold tap" as an example.
- Grasp the tap mechanism
- Turn mechanism clockwise
- Wait until water pressure is high enough
- Stop Turning mechanism
So, by looking at this example, what can we see? Firstly, I have too much spare time on my hands! Secondly, everything is workflow, and everything which is a task such as Making a Cup of Tea can be part of a larger workflow and will have many workflows within it.
Now, if we translate that onto say an ASP.NET application we can see many workflows.
The Menu is a workflow, usually the starting point in any site, when someone navigates to a menu item, what do they do then? They either read content or perform such as filling in a form or clickign buttons on the page, both are workflow items, both can be expressed as such, so will we be able to model our entire applications from "Go -->" to Session_OnEnd? I hope so.
I think Windows Workflow Foundation will be a really exciting project to work with and I look forward to using it in my applications.
http://www.windowsworkflow.net/