Rotating List w/Timer

Question

I haven’t used Windows Workflow before, can someone please tell me if this is possible and perhaps give me a pointer or two before I start?

I would like a user to open a webpage and/or WPF application to start a process. This process would have an interval timer set configurable defaulted to 15 minutes. After the process starts, a list of items is rotated when the interval is reached with or without a client connected. The client wouldn’t need to be connected but the next time they did connect, they would see the time remaining and the list of items would be shown. We are currently using Windows Azure.

Thanks for any assistance.

-Brian

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Brian K. Williams

Answer 1

I am going to move the thread to Windows Azure because it sounds like it is mostly a Windows Azure question rather than AppFabric. If you could give more details about your question this would help people understand more about what you are asking.

Thanks, 

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

Answer 2

You could do what you describe using either a background thread in a Windows Azure web role, or as a worker role. A web role would work best in a single-server / low-traffic / low-workload type app. A worker role would be more scalable, but also requires an additional Windows Azure instance.

Windows Workflow is more suitable for tasks that require complex state tracking. It sounds like your state management is relatively straightforward, so although you could use WWF, it would introduce a fair amount of complexity. If you need to persist the app's state, you can either use blob storage or SQL Azure.

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