Workflow 4.5 versioning and AppFabric

Question

The new versioning (and other) features in version 4.5 look great, will AppFabric be updated to support them?

In particular side by side versioning and dynamic update seem like they'd need to be supported by AppFabric's service host, right?

Answer 1

Hi

refer below article

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff729689(v=vs.110).aspx

Regards

Keyur

Answer 2

This PowerPoint from TechEd 2011 talks about AppFabric/WF vNext as being the same: http://media.ch9.ms/teched/na/2011/ppt/MID313.pptx. I have not heard any announcements on when this might happen though.

Thanks,

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If this answers your question, please use the "Answer" button to say so | Ben Cline

Answer 3

Just to add some more context here, this week I mentioned this question to the Microsoft product team responsible for WF and they are aware of the need to upgrade AppFabric for the WF 4.5 changes. I have still not heard if there is a plan to do this or not. I will provide an update here if I hear anything further.

Thanks,

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If this answers your question, please use the "Answer" button to say so | Ben Cline

Answer 4

Excellent - thanks Ben.

Anyone had a chance to play with 4.5 (e.g. the versioning features) and AppFabric 1.1 to see what does/doesn't work?

Answer 5

I can ask Microsoft if anything with AppFabric 1.1 will work or is supported with WF 4.5. My guess is that none of the WF 4.5 versioning will work with AppFabric. But I would wonder if you could even run a WF 4.5 workflow in the AppFabric host.

Thanks,

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If this answers your question, please use the "Answer" button to say so | Ben Cline

Answer 6

Hi Ben - have you been able to ping Microsoft on this?

We're currently wanting to move to .NET 4.5 for some new code, but are held back because it seems AppFabric (which is a .NET 4 based service host) won't even run 4.5 workflows.  Would be nice to have some guidance on this.

Thanks for your help,

Jason

Answer 7

Hello!

It appears that AppFabric is not a part of Windows Server 8. Is Windows Server AppFabric actually dead, which I would really regret?

Best regards,

Henrik Dahl

Answer 8

As far as I know, AppFabric is not dead but the naming has changed. So it is a little confusing understanding the vision moving forward because we have been used to the AppFabric brand. This is one of the confusing things even for me. Basically the new name for now is Azure Application Platform but this includes some non cloud or hybrid components.

If I remember correctly, AppFabric is not at this point part of Windows Server 8 but this is still fairly early to describe what it will be exactly when Server 8 is here. I actually do not know or have many of these details and the my replies earlier in the thread were based on a little more information about AppFabric and WF 4.5. I did test out the Windows 8 server beta and did not see it included by default like as a server role/feature, etc., although I certainly could have missed it.

I think this will get clearer as we get closer to the Windows 8 server release.

Thanks,

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If this answers your question, please use the "Answer" button to say so | Ben Cline

Answer 9

Hi all, 

We are running and testing our WF+WCF application (includes long runnings) on.Net 4.5, AppFabric 1.1 and Win2008R2 about two weeks.

Persistence and Monitoring are running as expected.

But we cannot try to execute dynamic update on on going workflows. I think we going to test dynamic update this week.

Unfortunately workflow versioning is not in our scope nowadays.

Answer 10

Ugur, Thanks for posting your experience, it is good to know it looks backwards compatible at least in the configuration you are using.

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If this answers your question, please use the "Answer" button to say so | Ben Cline

Answer 11

Yeah, I can also confirm it works, at least workflows run, persist, monitoring works, etc.. so that's good.

Would be nice to hear some more about AppFabric (non Azure).  As a poor enterprise developer all I seem to read or hear about are the goodies that people who can use Azure are getting, not much word about those of us who can't use it.

I would _love_ to use Azure, unfortunately it's not really an option, both on-premises and off-premises models supported by MS have major issues for the enterprise.