Windows Workflow anyone

[cp]

After a tedious research for the best UML tool and few years of frustrating UML Modelling going in circles, i ended up with Altova; and now i happened to dig deeper into the whole WinFX thing, and the Windows Workflow Foundation which is a part of that..would i be wrong to say that it is going to outdate UML back to oblivion? Some msft exec said that MDA aims at showing everything and so does not show anything in good detail. I've been working on the Windows WF for just a couple of days and it is an architect's dream..at least as far as .NET development is concerned..like they say "this changes everything"

[thomaskilian]

I have a good cure for most diseases: stay away from Microsoft

[cp]

i've never understood the negativity towards microsoft..each and every piece of software or tool i've used of theirs has had a "wow" factor, been stable and reasonably efficient. Msft has revolutionised almost every stream albiet stepping over some intellectual copy issues take for instance visual studio .net, heck that takes development to another level. i've been using it for years now, and it's just amazing, and i'm familiar with eclipse and other IDEs, and now this new WinFx thing..you gotta use it to know it..i was just not able to connect the dots with UML MDA..Win WF allows you to create a complete bi-directional link between a WorkFlow (State or sequential) and code..i guess i'm gonna use UML only in the abstract requirements phase for Use Cases and rough diagramming..

[Kevin G. Watson]

Funny that... but to 'oblivion' is a tad extreme... and how for that matter am I to stay away from Mircosoft ! Their everywhere, wowing us with cheapish stuff and....

[Paolo F Cantoni]

There's an interesting podcast: [size=13]OpenDocument and the Move to XML Formats[/size].

[size=10]"Customers are now implementing solutions based upon the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft's OpenXML standard, endorsed by ECMA, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Billions of word processing and spreadsheet files are being converted to XML in one of these two formats. OpenDocument expert Gary Edwards believes that adopting OpenXML means lock-in to Microsoft products on an unprecedented scale. In this podcast, Edwards defends OpenDocument's capabilities but also challenges the ODF community to out-innovate Microsoft to provide a competitive alternative to Microsoft's lock-in. He also challenges the open standards community to focus on delivering alternatives to Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers. Edwards also describes Open Document Foundation's da Vinci plug-ins for Microsoft Office."[/size]

It's long (about 1.25 hours) but I found it very interesting.  A case study in how Microsoft approaches "lock-in".

(I also posted this in the Automation forum - as it pertains to some discussions about adding formatted text capabilities to EA)

Enjoy...
Paolo