Pattern-based Analysis of Windows Workflow

The Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) has been introduced as part of the .NET framework as a means of creating workflow-centric applications. Its intended field of application is broad, ranging from fat-client applications and web applications to enterprise application integration solutions. Unlike other approaches, Windows Workflow supports two distinct approaches to workflow specification sequential workflows and state machine workflows which deal with fundamentally different types of business scenarios. To date there has been minimal investigation into its capabilities and limitations, especially with respect to the two different control-flow styles it offers. To remedy this, in this paper we present a rigorous analysis of Windows Workflows’s ability to deal with common control-flow scenarios. As a framework for this evaluation we use the Workflow Patterns. Our analysis outlines the strength and shortcomings of Windows Workflow’s control-flow expressiveness and compares it to BPEL and jBPM two other popular approaches for the design and implementation of business processes in a service-oriented context.