Bayer White, Connected Systems MVP - www.HumanWorkflow.net

When To Use The Policy Activity

Last Saturday while speaking in Orlando, Fl., I was asked about building data objects (entities) within a Policy activity. The person I was talking with wanted to build an object and all of it's properties within a Policy activity, based on certain rules so it could be saved in the database. Even though it is something that could be done, I think there are better places to do this type of operation, while keeping the policy activity for actual policies.

Wikipedia's definition of a policy is "A deliberate plan of action to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome(s)." This also applies to the policy activity... Quite simply, the policy activity defines rules or ruleset, used to decide actions. A good example for using a Policy activity is maybe setting rules for validating when an object is ready to be sent to the database. One could propose the case that objects could be built based on rules using the actions within a ruleset, however there might be additional validation that needs to be done to accomplish this type of behavior. Instead, this operation of building data objects so they can be sent to the database could easily be placed within an access layer which another activity within the workflow could call.

Jax Architects Meets November 29, 2007

This month we are scheduled to meet Thursday, November 29th, 2007. This will be the week after Thanksgiving so hopefully we will have a good crowd. Jeff Barnes will be back to talk to us about the role of an architect. It is always nice having Jeff so please plan to attend if you will be in the area. Also if you know someone else that might be interested in attending, please forward the registration link.

Also... Tomorrow 11.13.2007, at 1 pm, Jeff Barnes and Joe Healy will be in the auditorium, at the Modis Building with their .Net Tikihut Road Tour. Here is a link for directions and to register if you would like to attend or know anyone else who might be interested.

Orlando's SQLSaturday is Tomorrow!

The first Sql Saturday will be held tomorrow morning November, 10, 2007 in Orlando, Florida. And 'yes', tomorrow is the opening day of hunting season, but I am dedicated in showing my community support instead of being out in the woods. Besides, I am trying to get over just an awful case of poison ivy from last weekend when I was helping my father put up his stand, so I might be better off. You may think that the event is strictly for Sql developers but you may be surprised! There are also other developer topics like...

• Linq
• ADO.NET Synchronization Services in .NET 3.5
• XML in SQL Server 2005

Of course I will be talking about Windows Workflow and how it ties into SqlServer through persistence and tracking. I also heard that our 'Hacking Sql Server' session has been requested in high demand, so it looks like Brian and I will be giving that as well.

If you are in the area and would like to register, click here.

Visual Studio 2008 Scheduled

While trying to get over a deadly dose of poison ivy, I happened to read an interesting article about the scheduled release of Visual Studio 2008, by the end of November 2007. The article mentions that the announcement was made at the TechEd that is being held in Barcelona, Spain. The article also mentions that Microsoft will probably release VS 2008 on February 27, 2008.

Using Enumerations Within WCF Data Contracts

For the past couple of weeks I have been working architecting a client solution using WF hosted within WCF. One of the things I wanted to accomplish use enumeration within the data contracts implimented within the services, so that the proxy service would recognize the enumeration well. While researching how to setup enumeration within WCF data contracts I stumbled across this link. Hopefully it will help you too!