Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4) in .NET 4 introduces a new way to create web services that combines the power of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and the flexibility of WF4. In this lab, you will learn how to use the WF4 messaging activities to implement an HR business workflow scenario. You will also experience the improved hosting, deployment, tracking and troubleshooting capabilities of the new Windows Server AppFabric.

Do I have to do all the exercises?

This lab is long. To do all of it will probably take close to 2 hours. The lab is designed so that each exercise can be done independently. Just open the solution found under the Begin folder for the exercise. For example, if you wanted to learn how Windows Server AppFabric make it easier to deploy an application you would start with Exercise 5 and open the solution from the \Source\Ex5 \Begin (choosing the folder that matches the language of your preference) folder

Contoso has a business process for filling the open job requisitions in the company. The process will be divided in three tiers: a smart client application, a web site, a middle-tier workflow service, and a data layer.

1. The applicant submits an application to a workflow service using a Windows Forms client app

2. The workflow service screens the applicant’s education background by calling an Education service

3. If the education screening passes, a human reviewer will receive an email with a link to the website to review the application

4. The web site will call the workflow service to pass the result of the human review

5. The applicant is notified by an email and a callback to the client application

Figure 1

Services Diagram for the lab solution

Objectives

In this Hands-On Lab, you will learn how to:

· Use Messaging activities to send data in and out of workflows

· Configure the Messaging activities for a specific scenario

· Invoke Add Service Reference to create activities that consume another service

· Utilize Activity Templates to create pre-configured request-reply patterns

· Set up Content Based Correlation to correlate messages from the same client

System Requirements

You must have the following items to complete this lab:

· Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 - Download

· Microsoft .NET Framework 4 - Download

· SQL Server 2008 Express (included with Visual Studio 2010)

· Microsoft Outlook or Windows Live Mail Client - Download

· Windows Server AppFabric (Beta 2) – Download using the Web Platform Installer (see below)

Note: This Lab targets Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. The current version of Windows Server AppFabric, that is Beta 2, requires .NET Framework 4 RC.

Therefore, the portion of this Lab that shows AppFabric features may not work as expectedly until a new version of AppFabric is released.

Exercises

This Hands-On Lab comprises the following exercises:

1. Submit Application Service

2. Email Notification

3. Applicant Screening

4. Deploy the Solution

5. Troubleshooting

Starting Materials

This Hands-On Lab includes the following starting materials.

· Visual Studio solutions. Depending on the exercise you will find Visual Studio solutions that you can use as starting point for the exercises.

What if I get stuck?

The source code that accompanies this hands-on lab includes an end folder where you can find a Visual Studio solution with the code that you would obtain if you complete the steps in each exercise. You can use this solution as a guide if you need additional help working through the exercises.

Remember to build the solutions before opening any file using the workflow designer.

Next Step

Setup

Task 1 – Installing the Web Platform, Visual Studio and Windows Server AppFabric

1. Download the Microsoft Web Platform installer

2. Install the recommended Web Platform options plus the following

a. ASP.NET

b. .NET Extensibility

c. Web Deployment Tool 1.0

d. Windows Server AppFabric Beta 2

Note: In the Web Platform Installer Windows Server AppFabric shows up in the Enterprise tab. This tab is not displayed by default. To display it, select options and tick the box for Enterprise scenarios. Afterward you will see the option for Application Server in the Enterprise tab.

Figure 2

The Web Platform Installer with the Enterprise Scenarios option enabled

3. Download and Install Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4

4. You can optionally download and Install Windows Server AppFabric without using the Web Platform Installer.

a. Configure both the Persistence and Monitoring database

b. Accept all the defaults on the remaining install pages

Task 2 – Creating the Databases

1. Run the Dependency checker for the Training Kit if you haven't done it previously. To do this, browse to the Source\Setup folder of this lab, and run the CheckDependencies.cmd script. Install any pre-requisites that are missing (rescanning if necessary) and complete the wizard.

Note: This script file creates a persistence database by invoking the SQL scripts included with the .NET Framework. You can also use AppFabric to create persistence databases.

Task 3 – Installing and Configuring Windows Server AppFabric.

After installing Windows Server AppFabric, you will be prompted to configure it. If you want to reconfigure it later just search for the Configure AppFabric menu shortcut. AppFabric can be configured to work with The SQLExpress database created by Visual Studio so you do not need to install a separate SQL Server.

Note: The Web Platform Installer automatically configures Windows Server AppFabric so you do not need to do these steps again unless you want to re-configure AppFabric.

1. Start Configure AppFabric from the Start menu if it is not already running after installation.

2. On the Configure Hosting Services page tick the Set monitoring configuration checkbox

3. Select the monitoring provider System.Data.SqlClient.

4. Tick the Set persistence configuration checkbox

5. Select the persistence provider sqlStoreProvider.

Figure 3

Configuring AppFabric monitoring and persistence stores for SQL Server

6. Right click the DefaultMonitoringConnectionString, and choose Initialize Database … Use the defaults and click the OK button.

Figure 4

7. Click the back arrow to return to the main screen.

8. In the Features View pane in the center double click the Persistence Database Configuration icon.

9. Right-click the DefaultPersistenceConnectionString, and choose Initialize Database. Use the defaults, and click the OK button.

Next Step

Exercise 1: Submit Application Service

In the first exercise you will create a simple service that receives an Application from the smart client application and returns a response.

Task 0 – Opening the Solution

1. Start Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 from Start | All Programs | Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

2. Open the starting solution for Exercise 1 located under the Source\Ex1\Begin folder (choosing the folder that matches the language of your preference.) Use it as the starting point for this exercise.

What is in this solution?

This solution contains a web site created from the WCF Workflow Service template, and a data layer project you will be using in this lab. The web.config file has some minor modifications to include an appSettings section, and connection string for the database.

3. Press CTRL+SHIFT+B to build the solution

Task 1 – Adding a new a Workflow Service

1. Add a new Workflow Service. To do this, right click on HRApplicationServices, and select Add / New Item… (Ctrl+Shift+A), in the Workflow Templates select the WCF Workflow Service template, name the service to SubmitApplication.xamlx, and then click Add.

Figure 5

Create a New Workflow Service in C#

Figure 6

Create a New Workflow Service in Visual Basic

Task 2 – Exploring the Workflow Service

You probably have some questions about your service. What is the service contract? What binding does it use? What address is it hosted at? In this task, you will explore your service and how it interacts with the world.

Figure 7

The default Workflow Service

1. Workflow Services have an implicit contract that is defined by the messaging activities contained in the service. SubmitApplication.xamlx already has a working contract that might look familiar if you have built a WCF service before. Look at SubmitApplication.xamlx in the workflow designer. Notice that it has a sequence with two activities, a request labeled ReceiveRequest and a response labeled SendResponse. The request determines the parameters to the service. To see the message content, click View message in the ReceiveRequest activity, next to the Content label.

Figure 8

The message content – the parameters are implied by the data

2. Click OK to dismiss the Content Definition dialog.

3. The content of the message is a variable named data. To see this variable; click the Sequential Service activity and then click the Variables button in the lower left of the design surface.

Figure 9

Variables created by the Workflow Services template.

4. There are two variables. The first variable handle is used to correlate the request and response messages. The second variable data defines the message content that you expect to receive.

5. iables button in the lower left of the design surface.

Figure 10

The response message will be the data converted to a string

6. Click OK to dismiss the Content Definition dialog.

7. You now have a workflow service, but it does not have Metadata publishing enabled. To add this, you can use the new “tagless” syntax for WCF configuration in .NET 4. Open the web.config file, and add the following section. Also notice that there is no <service> definition. The simplified configuration for WCF will supply a default binding (basicHttpBinding) address and contract as required.

(Code Snippet - Introduction to WFServices Lab – WCF serviceMetatdata XML)

XML

<system.serviceModel>

<behaviors>

<serviceBehaviors>

<behavior>

<serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>

</behavior>

</serviceBehaviors>

</behaviors>

</system.serviceModel>

8. You now have a working Workflow Service. To see it in action, right click the SubmitApplication.xamlx file, and select View in Browser (Ctrl+Shift+W). You should see a familiar site for WCF developers

Figure 11

The service running in the browser.

8. &e-text-color -moz-use-text-color;padding:1pt 0in 0in;margin-left:8.65pt;margin-right:3in;">

Task 3 – Creating Service Implementation Outline

Your service has three phases to it. It will receive, screen and notify. Throughout the lab you will be implementing these phases. To begin with, you will add placeholders for each phase.

1. Switch back to SubmitApplication.xamlx

2. Change the Display Name property of the outermost sequence from Sequential Service to Application Service. You can change it directly on the design surface or in the properties window.

Figure 12

Change the name of the service to Application Service

3. The first placeholder will require a transaction because you will be updating a database as well as persisting your workflow to the persistence database. Drag a TransactedReceiveScope from the Messaging group in the toolbox and drop it at the top of the Application Service sequence. Set the Display Name to Receive Application

4. Drag the existing ReceiveRequest inside the Request area of the Receive Application activity. When the message is received it will create a transaction.

Figure 13

Drag the existing ReceiveRequest inside of the Request area of the Receive Application

5. In the body area you want to put the work that will be done inside of the transaction. You will have more than one activity here so drop a Sequence from the Control Flow toolbox group inside of the body and set the properties

a. Display Name: Save and Respond

6. Drag the SendResponse and drop it inside of the Save and Respond sequence.

Figure 14

The Service with the TransactedReceiveScope containing the messaging activities

7. Collapse the Receive Application activity

8. The second phase of the service will be to screen the applicant. You will implement this later but for now drag a Sequence activity from the Control Flow group and drop it below the Receive Application shape and set the Display Name to Screen Applicant then collapse the sequence

9. The third phase will be notifying the applicant via email and by sending a notification message to the smart client application. Drop another Sequence, set the Display Name to Notify Applicant and collapse the sequence.

Figure 15

Collapsed view of the workflow service with three phases

Task 4 – Adding Custom Activities

Your service will accept a job application from the smart client app. In this task you will make the modifications necessary to prepare the service to accept a job application.

1. Add existing projects containing the solution's data contracts and custom activities. To do this, in Solution Explorer right-click the solution node, and select Add / Existing Project. In the Open Project dialog, browse to Source\Assets folder of this lab (choosing the folder that matches the language of your preference) and select the following project(s)

a. HRApplicationServices.Contracts

b. HRApplicationServices.Activities

2. In the HRApplicationServices project, add references to the HRApplicationServices .Contracts and HRApplicationService.Activities projects. To do this in Solution Explorer, right-click the HRApplicationServices project and select Add Reference. In the Add Reference dialog, switch to the Projects tab, and select the projects. Click OK to add the references.

3. Your workflow is going to be long running. It will do some initial work and then wait for a human to respond. This means that you need to configure a persistence store. To add this, open the web.config from the HRApplicationServices project and add the following settings.

Note: When you deploy the website to AppFabric you can configure the persistence store within IIS manager. While working with the ASP.NET Development server you have to create the persistence stores and add the persistence behavior manually.

a. To the <connectionStrings> section add the following connection string which will use the WF4Persistence store you created in the setup for the lab.

(Code Snippet - Introduction to WFServices Lab – WF4 Persistence XML)

XML

<add name="WF4Persistence"

connectionString="Data Source=.\sqlexpress;

&nbsFirst"><connectionStrings>

<add name="WF4Persistencp; Database=WF4Persistence;

Integrated Security=True"/>

b.      To the <behavior> section add the sqlWorkflowInstanceStore behavior right after the serviceDebug behavior.

(Code Snippet - Introduction to WFServices Lab – WF4 sqlWorkflowInstanceStore XML)

XML

<serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>

<sqlWorkflowInstanceStore connectionStringName="WF4Persistence" />

4.       To make the custom activities available to your service you must build the solution. From the menu select Build / Build Solution (Ctrl+Shift+B). Ensure that the build succeeded by inspecting the Output window. If you look at SubmitApplication.xamlx in the workflow designer, you should now see a HRApplicationService.Activities group in the toolbox.

Task 5 – Receiving a Job Application

1.       Open SubmitApplication.xamlx and create variables to store the application request and response. To do this, follow these steps:

a.       Select the Application Service activity by clicking over the shape surface.

b.      Click the Variables button located in lower left side of the workflow designer. A panel that displays the available variables for the Application Service activity appears.

c.       Delete the data variable by selecting it and pressing the Delete key

Note: When you delete the data variable the workflow designer will show warning icons indicating that the workflow is invalid until you update the activities that used the data variable.

d.      Click Create Variable.

Figure 16

Adding a new variable

e.      Type ApplicationRequest in the Name box.

f.        In the Variable type drop-down list select Browse for Types.

g.       In the Type Name box of the dialog box, type the first few characters of the type you are looking for such as SubmitJob. As you type matching names will show up in the list. Click on the SubmitJobApplicationRequest type to select it.

Figure 16

Figure 17

Selecting the SubmitJobApplicationRequest type from the type picker box

h.      Click OK to finish.

Figure 18

Variables window

2.       Repeat the previous process to add another variable named ApplicationResponse of type SubmitJobApplicationResponse when finished click the Variables button to hide the variables window

3.       You need to create a response object to store the response. Set the Default value of the ApplicationResponse variable to New SubmitJobApplicationResponse(). Remember that expressions must be written with Visual Basic regardless of the language of the project.

4.       Now you can change the contract to receive a job application. To do this, expand the Receive Application sequence and select the ReceiveRequest activity in the designer and press F4 to display the Properties Window. Set the following values:

a.       OperationName: SubmitJobApplication

b.      ServiceContractName: {http://contoso.com/hr/}IApplicationService

c.       Content: Click the … button to display the content definition dialog and change the Message data to ApplicationRequest

d.      Check the CanCreateInstance check box. This will cause every incoming message received by the Receive Job Application activity to create a new workflow instance

Figure 19

Properties of the ReceiveRequest activity

Task 6 – Saving the Job Application

You need to store the job application data in the HR database. The provided SaveJobApplication custom activity does this using the ADO.NET Entity Framework. When the job application is saved the database will generate an Application ID that you will use as the primary key for the application.

1.       Drop a SaveJobApplication activity from the HRApplicationServices.Activities group inside the Save and Respond sequence above the SendResponse activity.

Figure 20

The SaveJobApplication activity

2.       Set the properties of the SaveJobApplicationActivity

a.       AppRequest: ApplicationRequest

b.      Result: ApplicationResponse

Task 7 – Configuring the Response

Though you have stored the application in the database, you are not finished processing it. You want to let the user of the client application know that you have received and are processing their job application. And you have to initialize the correlation handle that you will use to identify messages bound for this workflow instance using content based correlation.

1.       First, you need to create a correlation handle that will be used to correlate messages for this workflow instance. Select the Application Service scope, click the Variables button and just as you did before, add a new variable ApplicationIDHandle of type CorrelationHandle to the Application Service scope

2.       Next set the response data. In the SendResponse activity click on View message… to display the content definition dialog. Change the Message data to use the variable ApplicationResponse

Figure 21

Set the message data of the response to ApplicationResponse

3.       Now you can define the CorrelationInitializers. The initializer will extract data from the outgoing message using an XPath expression. The extracted key will be used to identify the persisted workflow instance. With the SendResponse activity selected, in the properties window click  beside CorrelationIntializers to display the Add Correlation Initializers dialog.

4.       Click Add initializer and add ApplicationIDHandle

5.       With the ApplicationIDHandle initializer selected, in the XPath Queries window select the ApplicationID : Int32 message content

Figure 22

Select the ApplicationID : Int32 message content

6.       Click OK to dismiss the dialog.

7.       The default namespace for types in your workflow service is tempuri.org. If you want to change the default namespace you will need to edit the XAMLX file using the XML editor. To do this right click on SubmitApplication.xamlx and select view code.

8.       Locate the Name= attribute and insert p: in front of the name as shown. This will cause the service to use the namespace of the operation contract as the default namespace 9494cf9.png" style="border-width:0px;border-style:solid;" />

Figure 22

Select the ApplicationID : Int32 message content

6.       Click OK to dismiss the dialog.

7. &for the WSDL types

XML

<WorkflowService

mc:Ignorable="sap"

ConfigurationName="SubmitApplication"

sap:VirtualizedContainerService.HintSize="252,435"

Name="p:SubmitApplication"

Task 8 – Adding the Client Application

1.       Add the existing HRClient project. To do this, in Solution Explorer right-click the solution node, and select Add / Existing Project. In the Open Project dialog, browse to Source\Assets folder of this lab (choosing the folder that matches the language of your preference) and select the HRClient project.

2.       Add a Service Reference to the SubmitApplication.xamlx service, to do this

a.       Right click on the HRClient project and select Add Service Reference

b.      In the Add Service Reference dialog click on the Discover button to discover services in the solution. Visual Studio will find the SubmitApplication.xamlx file. Double click it to see the details of the service. This will launch the service in the ASP.NET Development server.

c.       Set the namespace of the service to SubmitApp

Figure 23

Configuring the service reference

d.      Click the Advanced button, and check the Generate asynchronous operations checkbox.

Figure 24

Check the Generate asynchronous operations checkbox in the advanced settings.

3.       Click OK to save and dismiss the Add Service Reference dialog.

4.       From the menu select Build / Build SolutionClick the Advanced button, and check the Generate asynchronous operations checkbox.

Hands-On-Lab: Introduction to Workflow Services using .NET Framework 4 - TechNet Articles - United States (English) - TechNet Wiki

Hands-On-Lab: Introduction to Workflow Services using .NET Framework 4

Objectives

System Requirements

Exercises

Starting Materials

Next Step

Next Step

Next Step

Exercise 1: Verification

Verification 1 – View the service in the browser

Verification 2 - The client application can send and receive messages

Next Step

Next Step

Exercise 2: Verification

Next Step

Next Step

Exercise 3: Verification

Next Step

Next Step

Exercise 4: Verification

Next Step

Next Step