Pattern-based Analysis of Windows Workflow

The Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) has been intro-duced as part of the.NET framework as a means of creating workflow-centric applications. Its intended field of applica-tion 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 Win-dows 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. 1