The Windows Workflow Foundation is part of what is now .Net 3.0. Since this is the direction that we all seem to be heading in getting some solid information on subject is paramount. Fortunately we have a good resource in the book Foundations of WF by Brian R. Myers.

The premise of this book is to provide an introduction to the concepts, techniques and quirks of the Windows Workflow Foundation. It is not an exhaustive text explaining every nuance of the framework. Rather, this seems to be a somewhat of a high level approach of introducing the subject matter.

Throughout the text of the book plenty of example code is provided. As I really have no means at this time of testing the code myself I can not validate its accuracy. I am assuming the technical editors of the book have already done this but I have been fooled before.

What I did find disappointing is that only one chapter covers the integration with the Microsoft Office Server System 2007. This is disappointing to me as this is the new realm of where software developers are now able to venture into. However, I would like to point out that this chapter does cover the subject matter fairly well however it would be nice to see more titles from Apress covering this subject.

To give an overview of what is covered I will include the table of contents as such:

Chapter 1 – Introduction to Workflow and Windows Workflow Foundation

Chapter 2 – First Workflow

Chapter 3 – Conditional Activities

Chapter 4 – Flow Activities

Chapter 5 – Rules Based Workflow

Chapter 6 – Workflow and web services

Chapter 7 – Interacting with workflow

Chapter 8 – Custom Activities

Chapter 9 - Deploying Workflow Applications

Chapter 10 – Employee and performance review application

Chapter 11 – Integration with Office 2007

The chapter covering the reference application is actually also quite good. The application is not something I would deploy in a real world scenario per se but it does cover many of the fundamentals necessary to get a firm grasp of the concepts in action.

Overall I believe this to be a good work and worth the money if you wish to be introduced to Windows Workflow Foundation. However if you are looking for something more in depth look elsewhere as I believe more in depth texts are starting to become available.

Foundations of WF: an Introduction to Windows Workflow Foundation (Expert's Voice in .Net)

Just a quick reminder for us all living down here in Sarasota that there is another Sarasotadev meeting this September 12th. The details are as follows:

2007 Office System as a Solutions Platform by Microsoft's David McNamee

This meeting will be on Tuesday, September 12, 2006 at 6pm. Location: Sarasota Community Foundation, located at 2635 Fruitville Rd., Sarasota, FL 34237 (just west of Tuttle on the north side of Fruitville).

The release of Office 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007 is quickly approaching.  Come learn what is available for developers in these new releases and how Office System can become an integral part of your custom solutions.  We will also demonstrate building an end-to-end solution using Office and SharePoint.

David brings his experience as an enterprise developer, architect, and trainer to helping customers unlock their business information by using the Office System as a rich developer platform. There is nothing that cannot be solved with the creative application of the .NET Framework, Office System, and Windows Mobile! Find David's blog here.

It seems like to be a good meeting and since Sharepoint and the 2007 Office system seems to be where Microsoft is headed it might be a good idea for all software developers to attend this meeting. The community foundation is always a good place to meet as they have by far one of the best meeting facilities in the area and the staff is very friendly and welcoming. If you are a not for profit organization then I would highly recommend using this resource in the area.

Just as a friendly reminder to all those here in Sarasota that we have an upcoming Sarasotadev meeting sponsored by INETA. I recently received a reminder from Stan Schultes reminding the group that Tim Huckaby is coming to give a presentation on Architecting and Building Workflow Solutions and Smart Client Development. It should be an interesting event.

The details I received were the following:

August 2006 SarasotaDev meeting:
Architecting and Building Workflow Solutions and Smart Client Development - by Tim Huckaby

This meeting will be on Thursday, August 17, 2006 at 6pm. Location: Sarasota Community Foundation, located at 2635 Fruitville Rd., Sarasota, FL 34237 (just west of Tuttle on the north side of Fruitville).

This two hour session will overview Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and then Tim shows off his bag of tricks for developing smart client apps. This is a must-see session - Tim is immensely entertaining and knows his stuff like no other...

Architecting and Building Workflow Solutions with InfoPath, WF and SPS V3
In this session you will learn how to build custom workflow solutions with Visual Studio 2005.  You’ll learn how to integrate those workflows into SharePoint, and how to interact with workflows using InfoPath.  This session focuses on the power and developer productivity of workflow solutions built on WF.  WF is a powerful technology and this session will delve into the tips and tricks, positives and negatives when designing and building workflow solutions with WF.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), a platform component and part of the Windows plumbing included with the WinFx runtime, has an extensible programming model and runtime components to make powerful workflow solutions.  Couple WF with the latest version of SharePoint Portal Server (v3.0) Infrastructure and InfoPath Forms backed by managed code and you have quite a powerful set of tools, plumbing and infrastructure to build powerful and scalable workflow solutions with ease. 

This combination of technologies addresses one of the biggest challenges that .NET solution developers face today – workflow.

Smart Client Development
In the second hour, Tim will highlight smart client development by showing a bunch of demos from his developer bag of tricks.

Tim Huckaby is a Microsoft Regional Director and well-known international speaker.

On Tuesday, September 12, 2006 we've got a visit lined up by Microsoft's David McNamee of Tampa, who will talk about the upcoming Microsoft Office 2007 Server System (MOSS).

On Wed, October 11, 2006, we've got another superstar lined up in Miguel Castro, an author, speaker, and independent consultant in the NY/NJ metro area who specializes in building web server controls and .NET applications.

Microsoft has just released some details on the upcoming version of their Office product, formerly known as “Office 12.” It is now known officially as Microsoft Office 2007. Personally I am really looking forward to some of the improvements in this Office suite. These features include an improvement to the email management, a new user interface and improved collaboration tools through the use of the Groove technology that Microsoft recently bought.

Of all the improvements that I believe that will make the most difference in an enterprise are the work flow management and the improvement in collaboration.  As I am not specifically beta testing this program I can not really speak as to these improvements.

As it turns out a story like this has also hit the web and I have assembled some of the more notable links on the web. These are:

FAQ: Looking into Office 12

Microsoft offers peak at next Office suite.

Microsoft announces Office 2007 pricing, details

Does Microsoft Office 12 equal Office 2007

I am sure that there will be more details coming down the pipeline as now that the official product has been announced. Basically the questions out there are more to deal with how Microsoft will directly integrate Sharepoint into the Office suite. Hopefully I will not keep my expectations too high so as to not be disappointed by what I expect the end product to be.