WF Community Bloggers

It feels like this webcast has been pimped enough but..

Jon Flanders' Blog — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:10:55 GMT

If you haven't seen it advertised - I am doing a WebCast on WCF/WF integration next Wednesday at 10 am Pacific time. Signup link : http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032381608&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US Hope to see many of you virtually there :) Check out my BizTalk R2 Training . Read More......(read more)

I guess I should be flattered

Jon Flanders' Blog — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:22:11 GMT

That some spammer thought my wiki pages where hit enough to warrant modifying them on a daily basis with links to various "odd" sites ;-) Thanks to Craig I've upgraded to FlexWiki 2.0 and now those pages are locked down - I apologize if you've visited them and they haven't been right, should be ok from now on. My Workflow Sample Page My BizTalk Sample Page Check out my BizTalk R2 Training . Read More......(read more)

Ok - semi-technical post

Jon Flanders' Blog — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:46:47 GMT

Mostly this post is here to motivate me to actually get this book done ASAP - http://www.amazon.com/RESTful-NET-Jon-Flanders/dp/0596519206/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214538175&sr=1-2 Yes - I am writing a book on WCF and REST. Not a big suprise ;-) Check out my BizTalk R2 Training . Read More......(read more)

cross posting testing

Jon Flanders' Blog — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:34:37 GMT

still going on Check out my BizTalk R2 Training . Read More......(read more)

another cross-post test

Jon Flanders' Blog — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:25:22 GMT

again - feel free to move along :-) Check out my BizTalk R2 Training . Read More......(read more)

Speaking At PASS 2008 In Seattle

Bayer White, Connected Systems MVP - .Net Made Easy With WF — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:36:00 GMT

I just got back word from my buddy Brian, that we were invited back to PASS . This will be my forth year speaking at this conference and even though Brian and I keep the same title of our session, "Hacking SqlServer" every year is diffrent due to new threats and technologies. This means that we are continually implementing new tactics and technologies within our demos to help form opinions within our audiances if certain practices are safe or not. This year I will probably put LINQ to the test for our hacking dual demo and Brian may flash some new features of SQLServer 2008. Read More......(read more)

Generic "HasValue" And Policy Activity Gotcha

Bayer White, Connected Systems MVP - .Net Made Easy With WF — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:23:00 GMT

Recently I noticed this error, Cannot evaluate property "HasValue" because its target object is null. I did not get it at compilation of my workflow project, but running a workflow application. I use generic data types whenever possible, and I use the "HasValue" property as well, so when I started getting this error I was not sure where to start looking. Fortunately, this error means exactly what it says and since I cannot debug to the point where it occurs it probably means it is happening within a WF rule or condition. Normally if you have code that looks like if(NewPerson.IsMarried.HasValue && NewPerson.IsMarried.Value == true) it will process fine, however if you use generic data types regularly like me within policy activities you will come across the same error message like above. Fortunately, the way around this issue is to simply use the null condition so that your policy's business rules look similiar to this... if(NewPerson.IsMarried!=null && NewPerson.IsMarried.Value == true) Read More......(read more)

Sofware Meme

Jon Flanders' Blog — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:19:52 GMT

I was tagged by Scott - here we go: How old were you when you started programming? I was probably 11 or 12. I had a Commodore Vic 20 :-) What was your first language? Basic. What was the first real program you wrote? I wrote a program on my Vic20 to generate Dungeon and Dragons characters. What was your first professional programming gig? I build an ASP web site for the University of Minnesota Law School What's the most fun you've ever had...programming? Hmm - this is pretty hard. I think the most fun I've ever was last fall I got hired to prototype something and what I ended up doing totally exceeded the expectations of the people who asked me to build it. It was fun making it work and then fun seeing the reactions. I choose to tag no one (stopping the meme from my part of the tree ;-)). Check out my BizTalk R2 Training . Read More......(read more)

Jacksonville .Net Code Camp 2008, Suggest A Topic!

Bayer White, Connected Systems MVP - .Net Made Easy With WF — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:02:00 GMT

The official site for Jacksonville's 2008 Code Camp is up! The actual event is scheduled for August 23, 2008. Check out the site and add suggestions of topics that you are interested in learning more about. Read More......(read more)

Silverlight calling Workflow Services

Jon Flanders' Blog — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:39:15 GMT

One question I was asked during my web cast yesterday about calling WCF services from Silverlight is if the service could be a workflow service. I said - "Of course" - not knowing that it was a little more complex than that :) That said - here is a sample. SilverLightUsingWorkflow.zip (535.08 KB) Unfortunately I don't have time to go into the details right now - working on another project at the moment. The key to making it work is setting the instanceid context to null on the server when the "last" operation is called - in this case the operation implemented inside of the eventhandler which causes this state-machine workflow to move to the completed state (so that the client can then start a new workflow). I hope to find an more elegant and automatic solution - but this works for now (Hope you are listening Jason from the webcast - this ones for you ;-)) Check out my BizTalk R2 Training . Read More......(read more)

Code from my webcast earlier today

Jon Flanders' Blog — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:04:23 GMT

I did a webcast on using WCF from Silverlight 2.0 this morning - I think you can see the replay here in about 24-hours - http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032380766&EventCategory=5&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US If you watched (or watch the replay) here is the code: webcastcode.zip (3.46 MB) Check out my BizTalk R2 Training . Read More......(read more)

Jacksonville,Fl. Architects SIG Meets June 24, 2008

Bayer White, Connected Systems MVP - .Net Made Easy With WF — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:18:00 GMT

Well, I hope everyone is starting to enjoy the warm weather and the feeling of summer, which reminds me… this summer’s first meeting is scheduled June 24, 2008. This meeting will be a little different than any we have had in the past. The plan is to get our group to participate and learn by helping others within the community. I will start off the meeting with some basic architectural concerns/issues that are common within most IT shops, and hopefully this will break the ground for other participants to share their experience and expertise within certain areas. Please plan on attending this meeting if possible. I would like to have as many participants as possible to cover different topic areas. Register here Read More......(read more)

Unit testing asynchronous workflow activities

The Problem Solver : Workflow — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:56:24 GMT

In a previous blog post I demonstrated how TypeMock allowed us to mock out the workflow runtime infrastructure and create true unit tests for a workflow activity. Now this may not seems like a big deal but because most of the classes in the workflow runtime are sealed mocking them with another mocking framework is pretty much impossible. Now you can test custom activities by wrapping them in a test workflow, creating a workflow runtime, running the workflow and inspecting the result I can hardly call this a unit test as we have to create lots of, complex, depended objects. So TypeMock really opens up some new possibilities here. But the previous examples where still pretty simple, although mocking the ActivityExecutionContext has always been considered impossible, so lets try something more complicated in the shape of an asynchronous activity. Basically an asynchronous activity is an activity that returns ActivityExecutionStatus.Executing from the Execute method indicating to the workflow runtime that it isn't done yet. The activity uses ActivityExecutionContext at a later point in time to indicate that it is done by calling the CloseActivity function. Lets take a quick look at our new activity. public partial class WriteLineActivity3 : Activity { public WriteLineActivity3() { InitializeComponent(); } public string Message { get ; set ; } protected override ActivityExecutionStatus Execute( ActivityExecutionContext executionContext) { ActivityExecutionStatus result = ActivityExecutionStatus .Closed; if (! string .IsNullOrEmpty(Message)) { IComparable queueName = Guid .NewGuid(); WorkflowQueuingService wqs = executionContext.GetService< WorkflowQueuingService >(); WorkflowQueue queue = wqs.CreateWorkflowQueue(queueName, true ); queue.QueueItemAvailable += new EventHandler < QueueEventArgs >(queue_QueueItemAvailable); WriteLineService3 service = executionContext.GetService< WriteLineService3 >(); service.WriteLine(Message, queueName); result = ActivityExecutionStatus .Executing; } return result; } void queue_QueueItemAvailable( object sender, QueueEventArgs e) { ActivityExecutionContext executionContext = sender as ActivityExecutionContext ; executionContext.CloseActivity(); } } In this case the return value from the Execute depends on the Message property being filled or not so we need to test this. First a simple test for an activity with an empty message: /// <summary> /// A test for Execute ///</summary> [ TestMethod ()] [ DeploymentItem ( "WFUnitTest1.exe" )] [ VerifyMocks ()] public void ExecuteTestEmpty() { WriteLineActivity3_Accessor target = new WriteLineActivity3_Accessor (); ActivityExecutionStatus expected = ActivityExecutionStatus .Closed; ActivityExecutionStatus actual; ActivityExecutionContext executionContext = RecorderManager .CreateMockedObject< ActivityExecutionContext >(); WorkflowQueuingService wqs = RecorderManager .CreateMockedObject< WorkflowQueuingService >(); WorkflowQueue...(read more)

Orlando, Fl. Microsoft Community Summit Recap

Bayer White, Connected Systems MVP - .Net Made Easy With WF — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:29:00 GMT

Many thanks to Joe Healy and crew for organizing the community summit we had last weekend. I came down to Orlando, Fl. last Saturday, not sure what to expect, however when I saw the facilities and attendees, I knew that this was going to be a fun weekend. To recap...We were able to use the civic center for the weekend in between the first and second weeks of Teched. It almost felt like we were speaking at Teched, minus a few thousand attendees. However our MS TE's and community leaders did an outstanding job of organizing the event. Saturday night we had a geek social where our very own Eugene Chuvyrov spun the dance hits. He did a great job of DJing the party and getting things rolling throughout the night. There were some cool games played for play money to buy an XBox 360. My talk was last Sunday morning at 9 a.m.(probably one of the earliest times I have ever spoke), and I think I pulled around 100 attendees. I did a 1.5 hour presentation on WF, setting the foundation on what to expect for later presentations that followed for 3.0/3.5 services. Based on some of the feedback I received from speaking, my next couple of blog postings will be focused on answering the questions that were gathered from my session. Read More......(read more)

Changing the ActivityDesignerTheme on an activity

The Problem Solver : Workflow — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:34:07 GMT

Using an ActivityDesignerTheme is a quick way to customize the appearance of an activity in the workflow designer. But there is a gotcha Because once you applied the theme and have a workflow with the custom activity open in the designer no matter what you do changes will not be applied. I am not sure why this is but I suppose the designer caches the color scheme and doesn't see any changes made to it. Take the following activity: using System; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Drawing; using System.Workflow.ComponentModel; using System.Workflow.ComponentModel.Design; using System.Drawing.Drawing2D; namespace WorkflowConsoleApplication4 { [ Designer ( typeof ( MyActivity1ActivityDesigner ))] public partial class MyActivity : Activity { } [ ActivityDesignerTheme ( typeof ( MyActivity1ActivityDesignerTheme ))] public class MyActivity1ActivityDesigner : ActivityDesigner { } public class MyActivity1ActivityDesignerTheme : ActivityDesignerTheme { /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the MyActivity1ActivityDesignerTheme class. /// </summary> public MyActivity1ActivityDesignerTheme( WorkflowTheme theme) : base (theme) { BackColorStart = Color .LightBlue; BackColorEnd = Color .Blue; BackgroundStyle = LinearGradientMode .ForwardDiagonal; } } } Which look like this in the designer Clearly the background has a blue gradient. Now if I change the theme code to the following: public class MyActivity1ActivityDesignerTheme : ActivityDesignerTheme { /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the MyActivity1ActivityDesignerTheme class. /// </summary> public MyActivity1ActivityDesignerTheme( WorkflowTheme theme) : base (theme) { BackColorStart = Color .LightCyan; BackColorEnd = Color .Cyan; BackgroundStyle = LinearGradientMode .ForwardDiagonal; } } You might expect the activity to change its look to: Unfortunately this doesn't happen Now you can quit Visual Studio and restart it after which the new style will take affect but there is a quicker way. Right click the activity and select "Select Custom Theme..." When the dialog shows just click OK and the designer reads the theme again Enjoy! www.TheProblemSolver.nl http://wiki.WindowsWorkflowFoundation.eu...(read more)