Wf User Interface, Workflow-based Framework For The Design And Realization

Recently as the e-commerce develops rapidly,workflow is taking a more and more important role.From the business flow of an standalone system in enterprise to enterprise infrastructure applications,from integrated services to the interactive cooperation between enterprise and partners,workflow makes big steps forward.Workflow itself is characterized of grained service.In another word,it's the kind of service satisfying small fraction of work items,which are taking the advantages of being reused in variable environments.This feature,on the contrary,creates millions of possibilities to merge different results into a workflow.So,from a simple layer perspective,a workflow is just a series of services stick together to satisfy a specific business flow.After WF was released,it aroused widespread attention.No doubt,it's closely bound to Microsoft technologies.But there is great similarity between its infrastructure and other Web service workflow engine.Its core component is WF runtime,providing execution and coordination for workflow commands.After the workflow starts up,you can not only deploy standard Web service semantics of service side in its infrastructure,embed some desktop applications(such as office), but also any application capable of connecting to.NET framework.It tries to provide a whole solution for a stale problem - business flow.Based on the above feature of WF,this thesis advocates a UI workflow framework.It implements user interface navigation logic by workflow,normally called page flow.So,UI developers can get out of complicated and changing navigation logic,and its componentized structure enables re-usage of page flow.On the other hand,this framework inherits powerful design capabilities of WF,you can adjust its components according to user requirements.The frarnework's realization is divided into two parts:Modeling component, providing workflow members modeling user interface navigation,such as a set of custom activities and relative design features;Hosting component,providing workflow hosting runtime environment for different UI technologies,which includes getting use of workflow status in application and run workflow delay at background etc.