MADHU@MICROSOFT BLOG : WF

WORKFLOW TRACE IN e2e format

madhu_ponduru@hotmail.com — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:20:00 GMT

PDC 2008 WEBCAST (WCF/WF)

madhu_ponduru@hotmail.com — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:56:00 GMT

WF 4.0

http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/pdc2008.wf/

WCF 4.0

http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/pdc2008.wcf/

PDC 2008 links

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/

https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx

SAMPLE WF CONFIG FOR NLB SCENARIO

madhu_ponduru@hotmail.com — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 23:36:00 GMT

If you are deploying your workflow application to multiple machines(NLB scenario) and all these machines are using same database for persistence , you need to use following config

(1)OwnershipTimeoutSeconds should be very high value ,so other hosts can't load these workflows

(2)Disable auto unload

SAMPLE WORKFLOW CONFIG:

</CommonParameters>

</Services>

</WorkflowRuntime>

AFTER WE ARE DONE WITH WORKFLOW, WE CAN CALL THIS METHOD TO UNLOAD WORKFLOW MANUALLY:

StateMachineWorkflowInstance stateInstance = new StateMachineWorkflowInstance(Application["WorkflowRuntime"] as WorkflowRuntime, instanceId);

stateInstance.WorkflowInstance.Unload();

Workflow Designer and performance

madhu_ponduru@hotmail.com — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:51:00 GMT

// we improved WF designer performance in .NET 3.5 sp1 , After .NET 3.5 sp1 also, you may see some designer performance problems, you can follow these guide lines to increase WF designer performance

Commonly reported issues

1. Time taken to open a workflow document is long.

2. Opening Activity bind dialog is slow.

Reasons for slow down

The Workflow designer relies on parsing the source code in the current project to provide updated design information in workflow design surface, rules dialog intellisense etc. This is mainly to enable scenarios where picking up changes from the source even before the project has been rebuilt.

Tips to make designer perform better

1. Move all types used in workflows to a different project than where the workflows live.

Move interfaces, event types, custom activities, helper classes to a different project than in which the workflow resides. E.g. in the solution from a customer, there were about 10 project, with 10 workflows each and 10 associated event types. These types are all reparsed to update to build the design time type information every time the user changes workflows in the project. Moving these to a different assembly e.g just one project with all the types needed for the 10 workflow projects will help improve performance.

2. Reduce the number of workflows in a project.

Each workflow is a type ( directly in c#/vb, and indirectly in xoml case) that needs a design time type to be built by parsing, so if there are 10 workfows in a project, opening any workflow in the project for the first time means parsing all the other workflows as well. Classifying these workflows based on their function and grouping them in 2-3 workflows per project improved performance drastically.

3. Re-Factor large state machine workflows into smaller workflows

One example we found from a customer had 780 states and 1000 activity binds in the same workflow, leading to a InitializeComponent() of about 16000 lines. Factoring this state machine into smaller reusable workflows will making designer performance much better, and reduce a lot of redundant states.

4. Don’t do long running work in activity constructors

Activity constructors are called during design time also, so doing things like connecting to a database etc should never be done in constructors, this can make the designer take too long to open workflow documents using these activities.

REFERENCE:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3808068&SiteID=1

.NET 3.5 SP1 /Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 available to customers

madhu_ponduru@hotmail.com — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:50:00 GMT

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AB99342F-5D1A-413D-8319-81DA479AB0D7&displaylang=en

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (exe)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FBEE1648-7106-44A7-9649-6D9F6D58056E&displaylang=en

ManualWorkflowSchedulerService+Delay Activity

madhu_ponduru@hotmail.com — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 05:06:00 GMT

By default, the ManualWorkflowSchedulerService is used without active timers. So when the delay is hit, the workflow yields the thread back to the scheduler, and when the delay expires, nobody is around to call RunWorkflow. If you look in the web.config for the service you should see the entry for the scheduler service and you can add in the UseActiveTimers=true which will cause the workflow to resume when the delay expires

Example:

useActiveTimers:

Boolean that determines how delay activities are handled. If true, the scheduler service automatically resumes workflows after delay activities expire (by using an in-memory timer). If false, the host must manually resume the workflow after the delay activities expire.

Not able to query Tracking data real time when application and tracking database on different machines

madhu_ponduru@hotmail.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:32:00 GMT

The remote SQL server's clock should be in sync with the machine's clock where the program is run.

The sqlTrackingWorkflowInstance.WorkflowEvents fetches WorkFlowEvents in a DateTime range between SqlDateTime.MinValue and DateTime.UtcNow. If the SQL machines clock is ahead of the application machines clock then events will not be fetched until the application machine's clock catches up with the events DateTime creation time.

CONCLUSION:

Make sure your application server and Database server clock is in sync (you have to sync it to seconds also).
make sure tracking service IsTransactional property set it to false

Example:

SqlTrackingService trackingservice = new SqlTrackingService(connectionString);

trackingservice.IsTransactional = false;

workflowRuntime.AddService(trackingservice);

How to capture SqlWorkflowPersistenceService errors.

madhu_ponduru@hotmail.com — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:55:00 GMT

If you are failed to persist the workflow or read workflow information from the Database ,workflow runtime may raise Abort event or Terminated event without raising any error messages ,so if you got Abort event or Terminate event and if you don't know why workflow fired these events, Please enable workflow trace to debug these problems

How to enable workflow trace

http://blogs.msdn.com/madhuponduru/archive/2008/01/17/workflow-trace.aspx

You can find workflow FAQ here

http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2272219&SiteID=1&mode=1

WF ARTICLES

madhu_ponduru@hotmail.com — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:17:00 GMT

//If you know any good WF articles, Please let me know

Workflow Communications
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163365.aspx

Build Custom Activities To Extend The Reach Of Your Workflows
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163504.aspx

ActivityExecutionContext in Workflows
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163414.aspx

Workflow Services
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc164251.aspx

Tracking Services in Windows Workflow Foundation
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163466.aspx

Integrating Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb266709.aspx

State Machines In Windows Workflow
http://www.odetocode.com/Articles/460.aspx

ASP.NET and Windows Workflows Foundation
http://www.odetocode.com/Articles/465.aspx

Hosting Windows Workflow
http://www.odetocode.com/Articles/457.aspx

WF TRAINING MATERIAL

madhu_ponduru@hotmail.com — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:00:00 GMT

if you know any good WF articles and video links, please let me know, I will update this list

ARTICLES:

Introducing Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation: An Early Look
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480215.aspx

Introduction to the Windows Workflow Foundation Rules Engine
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480193.aspx

Introduction to Hosting Windows Workflow Foundation
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa663362.aspx

Windows Workflow Foundation: Everything About Re-Hosting the Workflow Designer
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480213.aspx

Windows Workflow Foundation: Creating a Custom Composite Activity
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480200.aspx

Performance Characteristics of Windows Workflow Foundation

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa973808.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/madhuponduru/archive/2008/03/06/wf-articles.aspx

Multithreaded Parallelism in Windows Workflow Foundation http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb887609.aspx

WF MSDN site:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa663328.aspx

Workflow community site:

http://wf.netfx3.com/

http://wf.netfx3.com/files/folders/screencasts/default.aspx

If you have any questions about WF, Post your question here

http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/showforum.aspx?forumid=122&siteid=1

WF team blogs

http://blogs.msdn.com/davegreen/
http://blogs.msdn.com/kavitak/
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomlake/default.aspx

You can try these labs

http://blogs.msdn.com/madhuponduru/archive/2007/10/30/hands-on-labs-for-windows-workflow-foundation-in-c-and-vb-net.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C1863E23-482C-4B79-9F3C-417A92D8D1D9&displaylang=en

Videos:

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/screencasts/tags/Workflow/default.aspx

http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Windows+Workflow/

WORKFLOW TRACE

madhu_ponduru@hotmail.com — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:29:00 GMT

Add following info to your application configuration file to trace WF related info

Note:

We can control trace by using trace switches, so if you don't want trace all the info, you can trace only errors by using following trace switches

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.sourcelevels.aspx

Reference:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa663362.aspx