What do you mean, you want a Business Rules and Workflow Application Block?

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Thanks to everybody who has already responded to the Enterprise Library v3 Feature Prioritization Survey. There have been 200 responses in just the first day! We'll wait a bit longer to give even more people a chance to respond before we analyze the results in detail, but we are already starting to get a great picture of what you would like to see in the next release.

From a quick look through the responses we've received so far, one thing which took me a bit by surprise was the number of votes for new application blocks to be added to the library. We're definitely open to doing this, but before we can thnk about what's involved we need to get a better picture of what scenarios you need to support and what functionality you need.

In particular, there seems to be a huge demand for a Business Rules Application Block and a Workflow Application Block. For all of you who voted for these (you know who you are!) we have a few more questions for you. Feel free to respond as comments on the blog, or if you'd prefer you can e-mail me.

If you'd like to see a Business Rules Application Block: How would this application block relate to BizTalk Server's Rules Engine? Does it address the same or a different scenario? Would it be completely distinct from the BizTalk Rules Engine, or would it provide additional functionality that layers on top of it? What are the key features you would like to see in such a block? How would you imagine this block would integrate with other Enterprise Library application blocks?

If you'd like to see a Workflow Application Block: How would this application block relate to Windows Workflow Foundation (or WF for short - if you call it something else they will set their pandas on you)? Would it leverage WF or be competely distinct? Are the important workflow scenarios that WF doesn't address that you would like to see in the block? How much have you looked at WF? How would you imagine this block would integrate with other Enterprise Library application blocks?

We're really interested in finding out more about what you're looking for around these scenarios. We can't promise to deliver anything at this stage, but we will promise to listen!