How to use .Net WorkFlow 4.0 in distributed application

Question

We are developing an ERP distributed application which is having WCF Data service server and client, where we planned to use WF4.0 for the leave approval process. Leave approval process will be as explained below.

• Employee will request leave for his reporting officer through his ERP Client. Approver [reporting officer] will get the notification about leave request.

• Approver will approve the leave request through his ERP Client. Leave requester will get the notification about leave approval.

The process mentioned above should happen through single work flow. Since ours is distributed application, is it possible to have same single work flow object across different ERP Clients?

Please provide your valuable ideas to accheive the above task.

Answer 1

Yes, you can have this with persistence WF feature:

• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WF/WF4Extensions.aspx

As workflows' state is saved into a database and WF provides a rich API to restore a workflow instance to some saved state, you can distribute a workflow across different tiers.