How to define multiple Receive activities within a single workflow service (WF4)

Question

Hi,

I have a workflow service (defined declaretively in a .xamlx file) that currently contains one Recieve activity. As you may know, services usually expose more than one operation. And that's what I would like to do with my service too. How do I add more operations to this service? Without WF, that's really easy. Just add as many methods as you wish and decorate them with OperationContract. Then the client can call any of the operations that service offers. In WF4, on the other hand, when I try to add another Recieve activity to the service, I can only add it either before or after an existing activiy. I thought I might use the Pick activity to accomplish this, but I'm just guessing. Is this how I do it? Or should I add another workflow service and add the Receive activity to it? (doesn't sound like a good solution at all). Or perhaps there is a right way to accomplish this?

P.S As you can tell, I'm totally new to WF in general, and WF4 in particular.

Thanks, Avi

Answer 1

Having a single Receive activity at the start of a workflow is not uncommon, after all there is usually a single event that starts a workflow. And once started it can wait for other messages to arrive. However there is no reason not to have a workflow listen for multiple different at the same time and, as you mentioned, a Pick activity is the way to go. Just drop a Pick on the design surface, add as many PickBrache with Receive activities as you like and you are good to go.

Answer 2

I have a similar scenario where I need to implement multiple Operation contract all of which are part of a single service contract (1 service contract containing multiple operation contracts ) Each opeartion contract is reflected as a large work flow sequential activity with a Recivive activity at the start. I am using .Net 3.5 and I would like one class that implements all of these operation which is what I will expose in my serviceType when I am hosting (windows service) - Can I put all the wf into a single sequential workflow but I am not sure how I will acheive the branching to each Receive activity - Suggestions (.Net 3.5)