Workflow 4.0 Is Disappointing

re: Workflow 4.0 Is Disappointing

Uday Karuppiah — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:18:48 GMT

Very disappointing. MS always does this. I do not know who makes these decisions over there. STATE Machine was the most important part of the wf that most developers used and MS did not care about that.

Hopefully MS wf team can relase a new version of WF4 quickly which has all the wf feature 3.0 and 3.5 had plus whatever they want to add on top.

re: Workflow 4.0 Is Disappointing

Todd Li — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:27:08 GMT

Here is the quote

First of all, you should definitely not interpret the planned lack of a StateMachine Activity in .NET 4.0 as a long term value judgement on the StateMachine or a long term plan to not support such an orchestration style. We plan to provide a rich eco-system of activities in the years to come and State Machine is at the top of the list. The lack of StateMachine in .NET 4.0 is only a statement on that release.

To specifically answer your question, "Why was StateMachineWorkflow dropped out of WF4 .... ". When you release any very large product like .NET 4 there is a trade off between getting the new product to customers so they can start using it, and waiting to add more features in. We feel that the value we are adding with the new WF runtime and the modeling styles we have is very compelling and we wanted to get this to customers as soon as possible so they could start taking advantage of this value prop. It was a very hard decsion but it was determined that the earlier time to market for the product out-weighed the StateMachine activity. That said, we have gotten strong feedback on the value of the StateMachine activity from a number of customers.

Thanks

Bob-- WF Team.

And here is the url where quotation comes from

social.msdn.microsoft.com/.../25e4fc38-24b2-4727-a552-cd7c06d2e55a

I agree with you and stic. Lack of state machine is a shame of M$. How can M$ let down developers and customers like that? But good news, as indicated above, is hopefully we can get this feature sometime (well, probably not with the final release of VS2010). I guess what we can do is just waiting and praying.

Workflow 4.0, What's Coming, What's Changed

Leaning Into Windows — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:07:17 GMT

A few friends have pointed out that my post discussing my disappointment with Workflow 4.0 was somewhere

re: Workflow 4.0 Is Disappointing

A'braham Barakhyahu — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:10:02 GMT

So, I guess it would make sense to trod through WF 3.x, since 4.0 is not a game changer. I considering WF for approval process part of an application.

Interesting Finds: June 29, 2009

Jason Haley — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:45:38 GMT

Interesting Finds: June 29, 2009

re: Workflow 4.0 Is Disappointing

Paul L — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:23:20 GMT

Ugh - really? No state machine in WF 4.0... darn!

I keep wanting to really love me some WF but it is so hard especially when MS keeps reinventing it and that 3rd parties typically don't want to compete with a MS framework solution.

If you have any suggestions, though, on alternatives, or news regarding a possible state machine inclusion, please keep us posted!

Regards,

Paul

re: Workflow 4.0 Is Disappointing

stic — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:56:55 GMT

Thanks for sharing

In my opinion it is better sooner than later, but still shame on M$. :-(

Especially as it will impact quite a few MOSS instances.