Web Workflow Approach

Question

Hi,

I want to implement a workflow system on a new website which i am developing. Basically have an order object (in future may have many more objects) which can have different statuses i.e. initial,assigned,dispatched,cancelled etc. It is the case that the order can only go from one status to another e.g can go from assigned to dispatched but cant go from initial to dispatched etc. i am hoping that maybe someone can give me an approach which is best to take for something like this??????

Answer 1

Try Windows Workflow Foundation, it might be overkill for your application.

If you your WF system is that simple and you do not expect it to evolve much, you could use regular objects with an enumerated type or a dictionary / list of statuses.

Type and value together will give you current status and a list of available actions. Persistence of WF objects will also be very easy.