AppFabric Reference Implementation: Managing the LifeCycle of a WorkFlow Service

 We have new premium content for AppFabric server. This sample and the document are just what customers need to start using AppFabric Server to manage a .NET4 WCF Workflow service. Customers have been asking about versioning and security, and those are two features of the sample. The sample is released via the TechNet Wiki and this gives the community the opportuntiy to expand the solution and fix the code and doc as needed.

On the wiki:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/appfabric-reference-implementation-managing-the-lifecycle-of-a-workflow-service.aspx

The Visual Studio solution is at MSDN Code Gallery

https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/AppFabricRefImpl

Namaste!

Synopsis

The Starter Kit is designed to be a reference implementation; a secondary objective is to provide sample code that developers could use to manage the life-cycle of the .NET 4 Workflow Services on Windows Server AppFabric. It does this by providing a complete client-side application that enables design of .NET Windows Workflow Services outside of the Visual Studio IDE; deployment of these Services from the Client to the AppFabric server; versioning of the deployed service definitions; and finally management of Service Instances in a custom monitoring console. Additionally this document provides the instructions for setup, a tour of the features and implementation highlights.

The features enabled via the starter kit are:

• Re-hosting the designer to provide a design experience that’s fully integrated into the line-of-business application

• Handling deployment from design tool to the Windows Server AppFabric

• Managing the published versions of the customer’s workflow designs

• Securing access to designed workflows

• Executing and controlling instances of custom workflows from the product

• Reporting on business metrics collected from a workflow service instance’s execution

• Troubleshooting and diagnosing issues.