K2.NET vs WWF
Hi..
I have been evaluating K2.net and other workflow tools.. and addition of WWF adds to the confusion. now k2 solves most of the workflow scenarios though the licensing may be a issue with some clients. Now WWF g8 to use and with not many licencing issues but the problem its still beta.. So
what should you suggest to a customer who is planning for a workflows at a large scale in the next 6 months.. any pointers?
Regards
Paritosh Mhaisekar
P.S. Also i have heard some rumours suggesting that K2.NET might finally be merged into WWF
Yes, K2 has announced that a future version of their product, codenamed "BlackPearl", will utilize Windows Workflow Foundation. You can read their announcement here.
It's really impossible to recommend a solution without knowing more details about what type of scenarios you're trying to address.
What's important to keep in mind is that Windows Workflow Foundation is a development framework for building workflow into applications. IWindows Workflow Foundation is not an out of the box solution for workflow or a sever class product that provides enterprise scale out, monitoring, and management capabilities.
James Conard
Architect Evangelist - Windows Workflow Foundation
http://www.WindowsWorkflow.net
http://blogs.msdn.com/jamescon
Hi Paritosh
Don't get confuse , future relase of K2.Net will me comin on WWF well this also means that they might (very strongly ) give a tranformation path as we got huge k2.net usage base . I think for the next 6 months its gona be same k2.net (without WWF ) may be in late 2006 they goan come up with final relase of code name "Black Pearl" you can ask koos@k2workflow.com for more details .
Thanks James. So K2 would be building on top of WWF...
agreed that wwf does not have monitoring facilities and specifically the cool databinding UI controls as K2.
But is'nt WWF extensible enough to build those controls and create monitoring UI as well?
Paritosh, regarding your question on monitoring - yes WWF certainly gives you full API and ability to create such applications. In fact, take a look at WorkflowMonitor GUI sample that comes with Beta 1 SDK with full source code - it may be a good starting point.
Paritosh:
Aleksey, has it exactly right. With Windows Workflow Foundation we're establishing a framework that will enable other Microsoft products (like future versions of BizTalk and Sharepoint v3) and partner products (like K2) to build their own monitoring tools, authoring tools, etc.
James Conard
Architect Evangelist - Windows Workflow Foundation
http://www.WindowsWorkflow.net
http://blogs.msdn.com/jamescon
The most compelling example of the differences between WWF and K2.net is that WWF doesn't have any concept of a User or Person object.Without direct support for people, WWF doesn't have any concept of:
- assigning an activity to a person or group of people
- providing the ability to display a consolidated list of tasks outstanding for a specific person
- the list of workflows that a person is allowed to initiate.
Second, I haven't found any mechanism in WWF for supporting versioning of workflows ...another critical enterprise feature.
Lastly, WWF doesn't have any intrinsic concept of user and administrative roles and rights.
These are obvious requirements for an enterprise workflow solution and this is one example of many capabilities that K2 provides today and will likely add to WWF.
Best to think of WWF relationship to workflow as something analogous to ADO.NET relationship to database applications. WWF provides very important capabilities but it's not a solution ...just a technology ...a powerful new addition to the Windows platform ...but it's just a technology.
Michael Herman
Parallelspace Corporation
Enterprise Business Collaboration Solutions for Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Live Communications Server, Active Directory and Groove Workspace
Portal and Content Migration Specialists: http://www.parallelspace.net/sharepoint
Parallelspace Knowledge Center for Microsoft "WinFS": http://www.parallelspace.net/winfs
OpenCanal Community for SharePoint: http://www.opencanal.com/community
OpenCanal Community for WinFS: http://www.opencanal.com/community/winfs
Weblog: http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/mwherman2000/
Thanks James, Aleksy, Raz and Michael. Over all i see that WWF provides a neat framework to build up your own workflow applications and monitoring tools (SDK samples can be of guidance) and partner tools such as K2 "would" provide a readymade extensible layer which can be directly used by users. There might be some specialised features provided by K2.
Michael, I found this interesting post on the roles
http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=89792Things would be more clear once i get my hands dirty in the sdk sample.
Thanks!!
I would like to clarify that WWF has support for modeling Roles and Users along with extensibility mechanisms for plugging in existing/new Role infrastructures.
For example, an activity can be assigned to a Role at design time. At the runtime only the person who is in that Role can execute that activity.
Check out the post http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=101077 for more details
Our IT group is doing extensive work with K2, and we have tried the rest. Please, email
JustinMyrick@ClearChannel.com (Solutions Architect) or
PeterMoser@ClearChannel.com (Prinicipal Software Developer) for an insight to the fantastic possibilities you can reach with k2.
Best Regards,
David Jemeyson
I believe I have come across your offering before, but don't have any direct knowledge of it. I also couldn't find anything on your site related to your WF strategy. Can you articulate your WF strategy without giving away an trade secrets, unless of course you want to :-)
Thanks, Walter.
