The .NET Endpoint

Common User Mistake in .NET 4: Mistyping the WF/WCF Service Configuration Name

2009-11-09T23:59:00Z

Today I am blogging about a common mistake that several developers have committed when using our latest .NET 4 bits. This user experience has its origin in the simplified configuration work developed in this upcoming version of the framework. I will summarize it with the following scenario.

Suppose you would like to write a new WCF Workflow Service Application using Visual Studio 2010. The configuration file that is added to your WF service when using this Visual Studio template makes use of the simplified configuration features in .NET 4, and thus it does not specify any <services> section to define endpoints for your WF service:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<configuration>

<system.serviceModel>

<behaviors>

<serviceBehaviors>

<behavior>

<serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>

<serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false"/>

</behavior>

</serviceBehaviors>

</behaviors>

</system.serviceModel>

</configuration>

Therefore, a set of default endpoints will be added to your service.

Now, imagine you would like to take advantage of the new WS-Discovery features and so make your WF service discoverable at runtime. In order to do that, you will need to add a ServiceDiscoveryBehavior and a DiscoveryEndpoint to your WF service. Since the most natural way to do this is via service configuration, you may want to expand the previous configuration to:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<configuration>

<system.serviceModel>

<services>

<service name="Service" behaviorConfiguration="ServiceBehaviors">

<endpoint name="Endpoint"

address=""

binding="basicHttpBinding"

contract="IService" />

<endpoint kind="udpDiscoveryEndpoint" />

</service>

</services>

<behaviors>

<serviceBehaviors>

<behavior name="ServiceBehaviors">

<serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>

<serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false"/>

<serviceDiscovery />

</behavior>

</serviceBehaviors>

</behaviors>

</system.serviceModel>

</configuration>

The look of this service configuration probably reminds you of what you previously had to write to develop your web services in .NET 3.5 using WCF.

In order to make sure your service is ready to be deployed, you can press CTRL-F5, and then select Service1.xamlx. The following unexpected screen appears:

Why is the metadata publishing currently disabled? Looking at the configuration file, the service we just opened seems to have a ServiceMetadataBehavior with the httpGetEnabled property set to true. Why is this not working properly then?

If you take a closer look at the configuration file, you may realize the following: the default service name in the WCF Workflow Service Application template is Service1, and not Service. After changing the service name in the configuration file to be Service1, and pressing CTRL-F5 again, you will now be able to see the following:

The correct configuration has been added to your service!

What we have experienced here is the result of mistyping your service configuration name. When the service was opened, since no explicit configuration was found for it, a default set of endpoints with no default service behaviors was added to your service, and that is why the metadata publishing was not being enabled.

In .NET 3.5, the user experience was an InvalidOperationException thrown when a service was to be open to indicate that it “has zero application (non-infrastructure) endpoints. This might be because no configuration file was found for your application, or because no service element matching the service name could be found in the configuration file, or because no endpoints were defined in the service element.” However, due to the simplified service configuration work in .NET 4, this will not be the case in the upcoming version of the framework, and users will need to make sure that the proper configuration (e.g., security, encoding, etc.) is correctly added to their services.

We are currently thinking on different ways to mitigate this. Adding design time configuration validation seems to be the best solution so far. Opinions?

New Beta 2 docs to help with code migration (from .NET 3.x and .NET 4 Beta 1)

2009-11-02T16:06:08Z

Fresh on the heels of the beta 2 release of .NET 4/Visual Studio 2010, the team has been working on supplemental documentation to help you out with evaluation and adoption of WCF and WF in .NET 4.

Last week, two sets of documentation went live:

WF4 Migration Guidance: The WF team updated the documents to .NET Beta 2. We posted the documents up to the Downloads site mid last week.
B1->B2 Breaking Changes: The team also created a document that outlines the breaking changes between Beta 1 and Beta 2 of the .NET Framework 4.

We have a couple of new migration guidance documents in their final authoring/reviewing stages, and I hope to have them published out to the Downloads site by the time PDC comes around.

It’s exciting times having the second beta bits out, seeing what folks are doing with the new capabilities in .NET 4, and hearing from some customers that they are planning on taking advantage of the ”Go Live” License that is available with the Beta 2 release.

At any rate – happy Monday all – enjoy the docs and the new beta! If you’re heading to PDC and want to grab lunch with someone from the team while at the event, remember to drop me a note. BTW – I saw the shirts for the event last week – they look real nice!

Going to PDC? Want to meet the team?

2009-10-26T15:57:44Z

3 weeks to go until PDC09; sessions are being reviewed, demos are being polished, schedules are being finalized, and the booth machines are being installed and packed up to go down to Los Angeles. Among the WCF, WF, and ‘Dublin’ group, we have about 15 people who will be down at PDC to chat with you about what is coming out with the release of .NET Framework 4 and to discuss some of the thoughts around what might come afterwards.

With 15 people at the event, that provides about 40-ish opportunities to chat with folks over lunch at the event. With PDC 3 weeks out, we would like to offer up about 30-40 spots with the folks heading to PDC09. Attending the event this year are folks from the PG who write and design WCF and WF, as well as the folks behind the ‘Dublin’ technologies. These are our architects, our program managers, our devs, and some folks from our business group.

If you have interest in catching up with one of us at the event…

Click the ‘Email’ link in the header above (white text; lower left hand portion of the header), or drop us an email to the endpoint alias (at - of course - microsoft.com)
Use the subject ‘Meet at PDC’
In the message/body, give us an idea of who you would like to catch up with (general role is fine; we’ll match folks up appropriately) and what you would like to discuss
Don’t forget to use/specify the best email to reach you at

Starting next week (week of Nov 2nd), we’ll start matching up the top 20 submissions to folks – and connect you up someone from the team. You can then coordinate lunch or coffee/tea or whatever in advance of the event. We’ll then fill up the remaining spots in the week before PDC.

Topics can range from the technical (feedback on the product, suggestions about what you would like to see done differently, a discussion on issues you’re currently having (and how a change we might make would make it easier)) to business (potential case study, compelling partner product, would like to learn how to better partner) to how to get more involved with authoring tutorials/whitepapers to feedback on what could be done differently on the web properties.

That being said, the team will also be heavily representing the technologies at PDC – in sessions, at the booths, and in the lounge. Even if you don’t get selected (or even submit) for a slot, we’d love to meet you and learn more about how you’re using (or would like to use) our technologies!

See you at PDC!
- Cliff

Client Profile in .NET 4

2009-10-21T16:49:00Z

If you redistribute or require .NET 4 for your applications, you now have the option of installing .NET 4 Client Profile – a subset of the Framework intended for client applications.

Even better, Client Profile includes almost all pieces of Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation! The few exceptions are assemblies oriented around web-hosting and WF3 components; I’ll get to these limitations later in this post. First, I’ll describe how you can start taking advantage of the Client Profile right away, and explain what’s included from the perspective of WF and WCF. For more details about other parts of the Client Profile, refer to this introductory post by Jossef Goldberg.

An overriding theme of our efforts has been to ensure that applications running in .NET 3 or 3.5 remain unaffected when switched over to running in .NET 4. Also, developers with projects building in .NET 3 or .NET 3.5 looking to move to .NET 4 are also not affected (and in some cases, only minimally affected) when rolling their projects forward.

So if Client Profile doesn’t interest you, relax – it’s a choice. Also, note that if you install .NET 4 Full, .NET 4 Client Profile is a fully contained subset of .NET 4 Full – so anything that’s a part of .NET 4 Client Profile is a part of .NET 4 Full.

To enable your application to target the Client Profile, you just need to change the “Target Framework” setting in your project like so:

Applications built and targeted this way will be able to run on machines that have the .NET 4 Client Profile installed, as well as those with .NET 4 Full. These projects will not let you build successfully when referencing classes that exist in only .NET 4 Full. On the other hand, applications targeted at .NET 4 Full will be unable to run on machines that only have the .NET 4 Client Profile installed on them, and you’ll get an error message directing you to download and install the Full framework:

To maximize what you could exploit in the Client Profile, we have refactored two assemblies. Each of these assemblies is now effectively split into two, one existing in the Client Profile and another that can be referenced from only .NET Full projects:

1. We’ve moved the JSON serialization classes from System.ServiceModel.Web.dll to System.Runtime.Serialization.dll. These serialization classes are being type-forwarded, so if you have any existing applications, they’ll continue to run just fine. System.Runtime.Serialization.dll will be installed with.NET 4 Client Profile, while System.ServiceModel.Web.dll will come with only .NET 4 Full.

2. We’ve moved and type-forwarded some classes related to hosting and activation from System.ServiceModel.dll to a new assembly, System.ServiceModel.Activation.dll. The former assembly is a part of .NET 4 Client Profile, while the latter is in .NET 4 Full.

Like I mentioned earlier, almost all assemblies we shipped with .NET 3 and .NET 3.5 are a part of the new .NET 4 Client Profile. In addition, almost all assemblies we are shipping for the first time in .NET 4 – including all WF4 assemblies – are a part of .NET 4 Client Profile. A comprehensive list of what’s in the Client Profile and what’s not will be published on MSDN.

So what’s not included in .NET 4 Client Profile? Here is a list of the main pieces, but this is not meant to be exhaustive. If your applications depend on anything from this set of assemblies, your projects should target .NET 4 Full:

- WF3 in .NET 4: This includes System.Workflow.Runtime.dll, System.Workflow.Activities.dll, System.Workflow.ComponentModel.dll, System.WorkflowServices.dll, and other related SQL files, performance counters, and tools.

- WF4 and WCF Hosting assemblies: System.Xaml.Hosting.dll, System.ServiceModel.WasHosting.dll, System.ServiceModel.Web.dll, System.ServiceModel.Activation.dll, WsatConfig.exe, and related tools

WF4 Changes Between Beta 1 and Beta 2

2009-10-20T05:25:50Z

Hi all, I’m Matt Winkler, a PM on the WF team and occasional guest blogger here on the endpoint. I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the interesting new things in WF4 in Beta 2. For more info on Beta 2, please check out this page.

The goals of a milestone like Beta 2 are two fold: 1.) to react to customer feedback that we’ve received on previous releases and 2.) stabilize and lock down the product to get ready to ship. While the items in #1 will be most visible, the team has done a lot of work stabilizing the product, and I feel pretty good about the Beta 2 release.

What are the big changes?

Activity Hierarchy Changes

For those of you who thought it was a little weird that we talked about writing activities, but having to derive (ultimately) from WorkflowElement in order to write them, this change is for you. Here’s a snapshot of the activity hierarchy in Beta 1:

We heard that feedback loud and clear and have made a few changes to how the activity hierarchy is factored:

The key changes are:

WorkflowElement goes away, and is replaced with Activity. Activity is the root type for all units of execution within the world of WF
Addition of ActivityWithResult which is the base for the Expression activities
Addition of AsyncCodeActivity. We got a lot of feedback that people liked what we were doing integrating asynchronous programming within activities but that there was still a fair amount of work in order to hook those up. AsyncCodeActivity is some nice sugar that makes it pretty easy to write an activity that takes advantage APIs that surface a Begin/End pair using the asynchronous programming model.

Runtime and Hosting

Validation has been improved for activity authors to write code within CacheMetadata() to validate the activity tree. CacheMetadata() is also the one stop shop for customizing behaviors that were previously spread through methods like OnGetArguments(), GetConstraints(), and GetActivities()

Make it easier to use ActivityAction by introducing DelegateArguments to pass data into and out of an ActivityAction. In Beta 1, this required using an object of type Variable<T> that was assigned to a property named Argument.

In the ‘under the hood’ category, the team has made improvements to Persistance, Durable timer and tracking which should provide a better runtime experience for the WF4 developer.

Last on the runtime front, dynamic update was a feature that had made its debut in Beta 1, but was removed again between Beta 1 and Beta 2 - and will not be present in the RTM release.

And, within hosting, WorkflowInstance was renamed to WorkflowApplication based on Beta 1 feedback from users.

Activities

The messaging activities are the key component for integrating WF and WCF together. Based on customer feedback we’ve made improvements to:

Correlation
- XPath can now be generated from ParametersContent
- CorrelationQuery and AdditionalCorrelations have been merged into a collection called CorrelationInitializers. Also, we’ve reduced the need for CorrelationHandles all over the place by improving the CorrelationScope and having an implicit correlation handle.
Parameters support
- We’ve removed the *Parameters activities and merged that into the Send and Receive activities. You can now use the Content property to support MessageContent (primarily for untyped Message or MessageContract ) and ParametersContent (which is for the more RPC style list of name value pairs).

We’ve also refactored the semantics around the error handling activities to behave similar to a “throw” in a C# catch block. The most visible aspect of this change is the addition of the Rethrow activity.

Lastly, the InvokePowershell activity is no longer shipped as part of the .NET Framework. Fear note, for it is not gone; it has been moved to the SDK samples, joining other quite useful activities.

Interop Activity

The Interop activity is a key component for WF4 workflows, allowing you to continue to leverage activities built in WF3. We’ve made improvements to the way that validations and transactions are handled within the Interop activity to more fully support WF3 activities.

Designer

I plan on having a whole post specifically around that, but we’ve done a fair bit of work to address feedback that we’ve received, namely:

Expand in place support
- This makes it easy expand an activity within the canvas without having to drill into it. This also lets you collapse activities when you don’t want to see all of the detail
Imports designer
- No more fully qualified type names within expressions
Text of flowchart lines for FlowDecision and FlowSwitch
- This is a nice usability / readability fix for the Flowchart, making it easier to see which cases and conditions the lines leading from decision shapes are for.

We received a lot of great feedback from folks about Beta1, and we’ve had a few usability studies done here in Redmond which have provided additional feedback that have shaped the work that we’ve done on the designer. Additionally, we’ve done work to clean up the object model to make it easier to rehost and customize the design experience. There have also been a number of key stability improvements and bug fixes to the expression editing experience which was a little rough in Beta 1.

If there are other resources you are looking for, let us know!

3.5 SP1 RTM WCF Source Code Available

2009-10-17T01:36:00Z

Late in the summer we have released WCF sources publically in the reference source. You can now browse and debug WCF source code through Visual Studio. We are working to get the WF in reference source later this year. I will provide an update when WF is also available.

Please note that this is version-dependent and we currently support this for 3.5 SP1 RTM only. Any support QFE or GDR upgrades for the assemblies aren't currently part of the package. New updates will be available in future. Here are the options to browse or debug thorugh WCF sources:

Option 1 – Install & Local Debugging

Download Reference Source Code Center.
Install Reference Source WCF MSI in your local machine say under: 'C:\ReferenceSource'.
Launch Visual Studio 2008.
From the Tools menu, choose Options.
In the Options dialog box, open the Debugging node and select General

Uncheck "Enable Just My Code (Managed only)"
Check "Enable source server support"
Uncheck "Require source files to exactly match the original version"

Select Symbols under Debugging.
In the Symbol File Locations box, validate the location where the installed symbol files (.pdb) are present. If not, then add originally downloaded symbols location: C:\ReferenceSource\Symbols
Build you app, set breakpoints and F5 to debug..

Option 2 - Remote Debugging

You will need to make sure that the version of the framework is 3.5 SP1 RTM (no GDR update for now) as the project assemblies' versions and symbols must match. With this option you can debug and step through WCF framework code remotly through the reference source server.

Reference instructions under: http://referencesource.microsoft.com/serversetup.aspx

( Same as above, just set your .pdb location to: http://referencesource.microsoft.com/symbols )

WCF Extensibility Guidance

2009-10-17T01:15:32Z

We’ve just published the first chapter of the WCF Extensibility Guidance series.

One of the powerful things about WCF is its extensible architecture. However, the degree of extensibility can also be daunting. It’s not something you do every day, so you might not know which is the best extensibility option to use to achieve your goal.

Jesus Rodriguez was the lead author on this guidance. If I am ever on “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” and I expect hard WCF questions, Jesus will be my lifeline. I’ve needed his help many times and I haven’t been able to stump him yet. Pablo Cibraro, an expert in WCF security, also contributed significantly.

We’ll be rolling the other chapters out over the next few weeks. Please let us know how this guidance is useful to you and if there are other extensibility topics you would be interested in.

Contract First Web Services with WCF

2009-10-16T16:45:20Z

Christian Weyer has published a great article on the topic of Schema-based Development with Windows Communication Foundation.

Few would argue with the value of Contract First programming when building large systems. However when programming web services, the choice comes down to Code-based Contract First or Schema-based Contract First.

The WCF tools provide great support for the Code-based model – you define an interface using normal code constructs as you would for any .NET class or component, and then apply the ServiceModel attributes. Then the WCF plumbing automatically handles things like WSDL generation, and serialization issues. For most developers this is a very convenient model.

However, there are reasons, especially when interoperability with other web service stacks is a priority, why many prefer the Schema-based model. For them, the WSDL is the contract. WCF does support this with tools like SvcUtil, but manipulating WSDL by hand can be a daunting task.

Christian has long been a proponent of Schema-based Contract First and has developed tools to plug into Visual Studio to better support this model. In this article he explores the reasons you may want to consider the Schema-based approach, how WCF supports it, and how the latest version of the Web Service Contract First tool, WSCFBlue (a free tool hosted on CodePlex), makes it even easier.

All WCF, WF, and ‘Dublin’ sessions live on PDC site; 5 Weeks to Go!

2009-10-14T17:01:09Z

We’re five weeks out from PDC09, and the rest of our sessions went live last week. I know I posted a couple weeks ago about PDC and sessions that went live, but I wanted to let folks know about the four new sessions – to help you maximize your experience around the Connected Framework technologies!

This looks to be a great event, as the team dives in deep on the enhancements coming with .NET 4, and discussing some of the thoughts around what’s to come next.

PDC Sessions of Note
The below list is a refresh of the one I posted a couple weeks ago, with additions marked out.

The larger team will be delivering the following seven sessions:

In addition to the sessions being done by the team, WCF comes up in several other sessions of note at the event:

On the Floor of the Event
As an update, we have confirmed that we will have a small 20-seat theatre in the Framework and Tools lounge area. In the theatre area, we’ll be doing a series shorter ‘chalk talks’, discussing more special interest topics. There are some real gems being planned for discussion; we’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

I’ll post up any additional notes as we come up on the event. And, as a reminder, drop a note if you want to catch up with someone from the team while at PDC. Let me know what you would like to discuss, and I’ll reach out to the team that will be in LA and try to connect you with someone so you can coordinate schedules.

Hope to see y’all in LA!
Cliff

The team is getting ready for PDC; are you?

2009-09-29T21:19:03Z

The 2009 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) is less than a couple months away, and the team is starting to create content and demos for the event. The team has been working with PDC event management over the last couple months to secure sessions and space at the event; and I wanted to share with you how the event is shaping up, as well as make a plug for our sessions.

The event will deliver a lot of really great material, as well as provide you with access to folks who are writing the code. We hope you can make it down to Los Angeles in November for the event.

PDC Sessions Of Note

So far, four sessions are currently live on the PDC event website:

In addition to the sessions being done by the team, WCF comes up in several other sessions of note at the event:

We are working very hard to not present the same content as last year.

For WF, we’re building upon last year’s introductions to WF4 to expose more of the underlying architecture of the new WF runtime, really giving you a view into how different the new runtime is…and demonstrating how workflow services work in the new Windows Application Server technology (codename ‘Dublin’).

For WCF, we heard you loud and clear that there wasn’t enough WCF content. This year, we have a session focusing on the WCF enhancements coming in .NET 4, in addition to the sessions covering how WCF is used with HPC Server, Silverlight, and covering advances in ADO.NET Data Services (which is built upon WCF).

And, last but not least, last year’s PDC introduced the technology called ‘Dublin’ – and it’s been a hot topic for customers ever since PDC. This year, we dive deeper into how ‘Dublin’ lights up WCF and WF applications and where we’re going with the technology.

We have a few more excellent sessions in the pipeline covering technology futures; and I’ll post the updated list up here when the next batch of sessions goes live.

On the Floor of the Event

Beyond sessions, speakers and other team members will be at the event in the lounge area for Framework and Tools, both to hang out and chat with you about the technologies, as well as working a couple booths in the lounge area to show the technologies in action.

Anyone attending PDC is encouraged to stop down to the lounge and say hello. Bring your questions or just share your thoughts on the technologies; we truly love meeting our customers – and your comments and questions do have direct impact on the shape of the future platform. If there’s someone in particular you would like to connect with, let me know – I’m happy to share folks’ lounge schedules as we come up on the event and schedules are finalized…just let me know who you’re looking to connect with or a particular topic you want to drill down on.

We are currently working on getting a small 20-seat chalk-talk area in the lounge area again this year to do smaller, more niche discussions. We’ll post more on that topic here in the coming weeks, as well, as we make progress on that front.

Pre-PDC Workshops

And, lastly, it’s worth noting that Michele Leroux Bustamante will be running a pre-PDC workshop covering the Microsoft Technology Roadmap, helping workshop attendees understand how the many technologies that make up the .NET Framework fit together – from A-W (Azure to Azure). ^_^

There is also a FREE Windows 7 Developer Boot Camp pre-PDC workshop that is open to anyone (whether attending PDC or not) as long as there is room.

Not registered? There’s still room!

There’s still room at the event, and I hear they have a $300 discount for folks registering before October 13 (and there’s also a significant discount for students and employees of academic institutions). And there is still plenty of hotel availability around the convention center as of a couple weeks ago (when I registered). A couple of the closest hotels were full, but there are still plenty of quality ones about.

WCF Essentials Chapter 2 - WCF Templates and Tools

2009-08-25T04:28:41Z

We’ve just published Chapter 2 in the WCF Essentials series. This new chapter is about WCF Templates and Tools.

There are several Visual Studio templates available to help you to be more productive with WCF. In addition there are a few essential tools – some that are most useful as you are getting started, and others that you will use more regularly. In this chapter Michele Bustamante summarize the available project templates and when to use each; discusses some side-effects and workarounds; and discusses the limitations and benefits of the core WCF tools.

And be sure to participate in the forum discussion thread for this chapter.

A Developer's Guide to the WCF REST Starter Kit

2009-08-22T03:23:20Z

We just published a new article: A Developer's Guide to the WCF REST Starter Kit. In this article Aaron Skonnard covers all of the main features in the Starter Kit and demonstrates how to use these features in common REST scenarios with lots of samples.

Developer Introductions to WCF and WF in .NET 4 Beta 1

2009-08-04T02:44:19Z

Looking for a single place to go to learn about what’s new in WCF and WF in .NET 4?

We just published a couple of new articles that should help:

These articles are meant to be overviews of the most important new features and improvements in WCF and WF, with enough technical detail and code to help you as a developer understand how to use them.

We will update these articles over time to reflect any changes in the Beta2 and final release versions.

Enjoy!

New “WCF Essentials” best practices series

2009-07-31T04:08:41Z

Maybe you have decided WCF is the right technology for your next project because it has the power, productivity, and flexibility you need. But you might be a little nervous that your team will be able to get up to speed quickly and make the right design choices in applying WCF to you project. Or maybe you just used WCF successfully for you last project, but wonder if there are things you could have done better.

Either way, you will want to check out the new series of articles that we are releasing to the WCF Dev Center called WCF Essentials. The goal of this series is to give you “best practices” guidance on the big things to think about so you can apply WCF “correctly”. We will be releasing this guidance as series of articles or ‘chapters”, roughly one chapter every other week.

This series is written by Michele Bustamante from IDesign, who has been working with WCF and advising customers on how to apply it since the early beta. Her book Learning WCF: A Hands-on Guide is one of the best resources around for learning WCF. Michele also recorded a series of web casts that start with the basics and cover a broad range of WCF topics.

So this guidance is coming from a great source and has been reviewed by other WCF experts. But we realize that “correctly” and “best practices” are subjective terms, so to encourage community feedback and discussion we will be starting a thread on the WCF Forum for each chapter. Please use these forum threads to ask clarifying questions and to offer your own suggestions for best practices in each area.

Chapter 1 covers the basics and gives and overview of some of the topics that will be discussed in following chapters. And be sure to participate in the forum discussion thread for this chapter.

Migration Guidance for the WF Developer (Beta 1 - Part 2)

2009-07-22T02:41:46Z

About six weeks ago, the WF team published up the first four WF3->WF4 migration guidance documents, aimed at helping WF developers prepare and think about the new WF object model runtime.

Today, we published the next three documents in the series to the WF4 Migration Guidance document set. With today’s release, we begin moving from the general guidance and start to present cookbook material, addressing more specific scenarios and presenting code.

WF Migration Overview (Already Live)
Overview of the document collection and an initial starting place for the WF3 developer
WF Migration: Best Practices for WF3 Development (Already Live)
How to design WF3 artifacts so they are more easily migratable to WF4
WF Guidance: Rules (Already Live)
Discussion of how to bring rules-related investments forward into .NET 4
WF Guidance: State Machine (Already Live)
Discussion of WF4 control flow modeling in the absence of a StateMachine activity
WF Migration Cookbook: Custom Activities (Now Live!)
Examples and instructions for redesigning WF3 custom activities on WF4
WF Migration Cookbook: Workflows (Now Live!)
Examples and instructions for redesigning WF3 workflows on WF4
WF Migration Cookbook: Workflow Services (Now Live!)
Examples and instructions for redesigning WF3 workflow services on WF4
WF Migration Cookbook: Advanced Custom Activities (Coming Soon)
Examples and instructions for redesigning advanced WF3 custom activities on WF4

As I mentioned in the last post about the documents, these documents are initial draft releases that the team is releasing to you. For these, they are all written for the object model and features that are part of Beta 1. We will be updating the documents as additional releases of .NET 4 are publicly released, and the documents will address further scenarios with each release.

Also – again – the team will be supporting feedback and requests for the documents and accompanying sample code in the WF 4 forum on MSDN.

Happy reading!
Cliff