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.