WWF as a controller for the UI 

Over the last three months I have been experimenting extensively to get to grips with the Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF). The main purpose for me is to see if workflow can be a part of controlling the UI dialog with the user interactively. If you have been using WWF and had the same interest as me you would probably have found that neither the regular sequential workflow nor the state machine workflow forms really fits the interactive UI model. Especially if you want to have a 'Go Back' in the UI, things get really hairy.

You would expect the Patterns and Practices people from Microsoft to have a special interest in WWF, because there really is a good story in putting the Model-View-Controller pattern in user interaction and have the Model and Controller part of this pattern work graphically with WWF. Now someone else stood up at Microsoft and introduced a new product: ASP.NET PageFlow. It shows up as new WWF templates: UI Workflow. It combines elements of the sequential workflow and the state machine workflow. Of course it supports 'Go Back'. You can find an introduction of the first prototype code here.

It will be interesting to see if this catches on and results in a downloadable CTP code soon, because it really fills a gap in WWF. Kashif Alam promises that it will show up later this year…