Is Work Flow good for tracking lots of items in an automated system?

Question

Is Windows Work Flow (WF) good for tracking lots of items in a warehouse?

Say for example I have a warehouse that has 20,000 packages move through it a day. Those packages arrive and move around to 0 to 5 locations in the warehouse using a semi-automated system and then move to a storage location for a while.

Is WF a good technology to use to handle tracking movements and activities?

I hear that WF is good for long running processes and can move process into and out of hybernation fairly easily. These are good features that are getting me to consider it.

However, it seems to run a single point of execution through the WF app. Which would not allow for lots of packages "running" activities to update where they are.

I think I like WF, but I don't want to try to make it work for something that is not its forte.

Any advice?

Answer 1

Sounds like you would need a workflow for each movement or long running process.

I'm confused by what you mean by single point of execution. I'd create the workflow as a service and host it in IIS or your own service host and then it can scale as much as you need.

Since each movement would be a workflow, and there are 4 to 5 stops along the way to its final destination, you could persist the workflow at those stopping points and unload it from memory to help with the scaling.

Hope that helps.