Windows Workflow Foundation and ASP.NET

I’m getting more and more excited about the Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) and the role it may (or will) play in streamlining user interface of web applications. There isn’t a whole written about WWF, but David Chappell’s “early-look” article at MSDN is an awesome introduction (some people just have a gift for explaining complex things in plain language).

An example of WWF usage with ASP.NET goes as follows:

A Microsoft ASP.NET application that displays pages to its users might use a workflow to control the order in which those pages are shown. Doing this can make it easier to change the page flow without changing the pages themselves, as well as cleanly separating the application’s user interface from its controlling logic.

The web is stateless by nature, and the quest for creating online wizards has been on for years. Do you maintain state in Session? Pass parameters from page to page through Server.Transfer? Register hidden fields and imitate navigation from one wizard page to another? Any way you look it it’s been convoluted. I’m hoping WWF would bring sanity to this.

Todd Kitta has published an article at DevX: Working with Windows Workflow Foundation in ASP.NET. I definitely want to see more of this coming!