I promise I will follow up with more detailed investigations on my part but I need some direction here :
In our typical workflow user has to go through sequence of steps. THe sequence may vary for each type of workflow. I can imagine we will have 15-20 diffrent types of steps but these will result in few hundred workflows(15-20 steps organized in diffrent sequence).
Each step has diffrent set of parameters user will have to confirm. In addition user may any time wish to modify steps in any way he wants- add, remote steps etc. (some business rules are enforced though). SOme of the parameters across steps are linked through( a change in parameter for one step may result in change in some other parameters in some other steps).
Typically system sequences steps starting from top to bottom and user has to perform several actions to complete the step. SOme times if you change in one parameter in one step may result in repeating the step that is already finished once etc. We also need persistency of workflows etc.
My questions are :
- Is WF the right choice for me? Any experiences from real world users of WF?
- How is WF accepted in the industry? Are there any equivalent technologies from other vendors for such scenarios that's worth looking into? I need to be able to use it in .net platform.
- WF supports sequential workflows and state based workflows, but I with my limited experience I am not able to judge which one fits the shoe here?
- My plan is that I define an XML file with list of all steps. Each step will correspond to one activity, at run time I create workflow and activities as configured in XML using dynamic update feature of WF. Is this the right approach?
- How well is persistency supported in WF? I believe it requires SQL server which we don't have. Do we need to install SQL Server if we need persistency or WF run time has SQL server engine installed as part of .net package?
Thanks in advance.