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sharepoint-2010workflowworkflow-foundation-4
ImmortalStrawberry
ImmortalStrawberry

Reputation: 6091

SharePoint 2010 Workflows vs Windows WF4

We've been asked to look at SharePoint 2010 Standard (we currently have a small intranet on SP2007) with an aim to building a number of custom workflow solutions.

I don't have much experience of SP2010, but from a period of learning/testing it seems to be a very cumbersome system more tailored to allowing individuals/teams to create their own web sites for a specific purpose?

I have also seen some blogs on WF4 - which I have even less experience of! Can WF4 be used "stand alone" or does it require SP2010?

The workflows will range from very basic to reasonably complex based upon variables. e.g. "Route to next person in chain", "route to team based on a value(s)".

So my question is: Could someone give me any assistance in deciding which route to attempt for building workflows? I'm not even sure of the questions to ask of each of them! I appreciate this is subjective, but I'm sure there are people out there who have experience of both?

My experience is in C#.Net/MVC and WCF - the overhead of simply getting an SP2010 Dev environment setup and configured has already made me wary of SP2010!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1002

Answers (2)

Michael Stum
Michael Stum

Reputation: 180874

Windows Workflow Foundation is independent of SharePoint. You can create your own Workflow host and Persistence layer. APress had a great book, Foundations of WF which served as a great introduction to Workflow in .net 3.5.

SharePoint 2010 is based on .net 3.5 SP1 and uses the old/original Workflow Engine. It implements its own host and persistence, so it's quite its own beast. There is a wealth of information available for Workflow in SP2007 and SP2010, which is good because the list of caveats, exceptions and "You need to know this, or it'll bite you" cases. In addition, SharePoint 2010 allows workflows to be created in multiple ways: Through Visual Studio (Like a "real" WF Project), through SharePoint Designer and through Visio (the latter two being limited).

WF4 is a new Workflow Engine that Microsoft introduced in .net 4.0. It is not supported in SharePoint 2010, but the next version - SharePoint 2013 - is based on .net 4.5 and should in theory offer support for WF4. I have not verified this though.

Upvotes: 1

Maurice
Maurice

Reputation: 27632

I can´t tell you much about SharePoint other than that SharePoint 2010 still uses WF3 for its workflow engine. In SP2013 they upgraded to WF4 so if you are looking to run WF4 style workflows you will need to use that instead.

Upvotes: 2

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