Windows workflow foundation - Part 1

Windows Workflow Foundation Overview
Windows Workflow Foundation is a framework that enables users to create system or human workflows in their applications written for Windows Vista, Windows XP, and the Windows Server 2003 family. It consists of a namespace, an in-process workflow engine, and designers for Visual Studio. Application like Business Process Management, Document management, Page Flow etc might benefit from the WF.
What is a workflow?
A workflow is a set of elemental units called activities that are stored as a model that describes a real-world process. It describes the order of execution and dependent relationships between the activities. This work passes through the model from start to finish, and activities might be executed by people or by system functions.
Windows Workflow Foundation supports two types of workflow
• Sequential workflow – Each step in the workflow leads to another step. Steps in the sequential workflow don’t wait for human interaction to perform the next step.
• State-machine workflow – The behavior of this workflow is determined by the state of the workflow or by the transition of the state. A step does not perform an activity unless something happens.
Workflow runtime
The workflow runtime engine is responsible for creating and maintaining a workflow instance. The runtime engine can support multiple workflow instances running concurrently. When a workflow model is compiled, it can be executed inside any Windows process including console applications, forms-based applications, Windows Services, ASP.NET Web sites, and Web services. Because a workflow is hosted in process, a workflow can easily communicate with its host application. Remember that there can be only one instance of runtime in the App domain.
It is the runtime engine that starts individual workflow tasks, fire events for different situations and keeps track of services that can be plugged into the execution environment.
Structure of the WorkflowRuntime class
public class WorkflowRuntime : IServiceProvider, IDisposable
{
public WorkflowRuntime();
public WorkflowRuntime(string configSectionName);
public WorkflowRuntime(WorkflowRuntimeSection settings);

public bool IsStarted { get; }
public string Name { get; set; }

public event EventHandler ServicesExceptionNotHandled;
public event EventHandler Started;
public event EventHandler Stopped;
public event EventHandler WorkflowAborted;
public event EventHandler WorkflowCompleted;
public event EventHandler WorkflowCreated;
public event EventHandler WorkflowIdled;
public event EventHandler WorkflowLoaded;
public event EventHandler WorkflowPersisted;
public event EventHandler WorkflowResumed;
public event EventHandler WorkflowStarted;
public event EventHandler WorkflowSuspended;
public event EventHandler WorkflowTerminated;
public event EventHandler WorkflowUnloaded;

public void AddService(object service);
public WorkflowInstance CreateWorkflow(Type workflowType);
public WorkflowInstance CreateWorkflow(XmlReader workflowDefinitionReader);
public WorkflowInstance CreateWorkflow(Type workflowType, Dictionary namedArgumentValues);
public WorkflowInstance CreateWorkflow(Type workflowType, Dictionary namedArgumentValues, Guid instanceId);
public WorkflowInstance CreateWorkflow(XmlReader workflowDefinitionReader, XmlReader rulesReader, Dictionary namedArgumentValues);
public WorkflowInstance CreateWorkflow(XmlReader workflowDefinitionReader, XmlReader rulesReader, Dictionary namedArgumentValues, Guid instanceId);
public ReadOnlyCollection<T> GetAllServices<T>();
public ReadOnlyCollection<object> GetAllServices(Type serviceType);
public ReadOnlyCollection<WorkflowInstance> GetLoadedWorkflows();
public T GetService<T>();
public object GetService(Type serviceType);
public WorkflowInstance GetWorkflow(Guid instanceId);
public void RemoveService(object service);
public void StartRuntime();
public void StopRuntime();
}

In the next part of the series I will show how to create a workflow and use the runtime exposed methods for controlling the activities.