Chapter 2. Authoring Workflows

The workflow designer hosted in Visual Studio 2005 makes workflow design a drag-and-drop operation. In this chapter, we will build a workflow with the designer, and then take a detailed look at what happens behind the scenes. Ultimately, the workflow definition we see in the designer becomes a type in a .NET assembly. Because Windows Workflow is flexible, there are several paths available for the workflow to journey from designer to compiled type.

One approach is to author our workflows using a purely declarative style (using only XAML). We can also author workflows using a purely imperative style (using only C# or Visual Basic code). Finally, we can use a combination of XAML and code.