We have to write a ASP.NET site based on a workflow.
The client wants to see a graphical representation of the workflow. In addition (let's say it is a workflow for processing orders), the client wants to see at what point in the workflow any given order is, indicated on the graphical workflow representation by a highlighted node or some visual queue.
All of this must be available via a web interface.
Was hoping somebody had some bright ideas for how to achieve this without writing extensive custom controls.
Does Workflow Foundation 4 offer anything itself that would assist toward this end?
There are ways to use the WorkflowDesigner and issue the save image command through code but as it's a WPF control it needs to be hosted on a WPF form. I have tried to do this from a webpage but as the form isn't visible it has a size of 0. I didn't spend a lot of time in this so it might be possible.
See this for details on how to do so.
Related
I need to create an application to auto generate C code. ie. User can design the logic from the G-UI using basic blocks from C. This is similar to Matlab Code Generation. I need to do this using .net framework. When I search for the samples, I've seen about rehosting workflow foundation. I don't have any idea about WF4. Can you please anybody tell me is it possible to do the designer(Design is like flowchart) using WF4? And also I have seen some samples using MFC? I'm not sure which one can be applicable for my situation..
I think you are confusing the Flowchart and Rehosted Workflow designer in WF as some kind of UI to draw the flowcharts.
Workflows are meant for executing business process and the different blocks like If-Else
While etc help to implement a business logic.
Workflow Designer just provides a visual way of representing those if else / whiles etc so that developers and possible super users of the application can modify the business logic in a more visual manner instead of writing them using code.
We want a LMS(coded in ASP.NET/vb.net) which is able to import SCORM packages & display it to learner for viewing content. I am totally new to SCORM and have been shifted to this project. I want to know how can I access SCORM Assessment object's (Test) result, like Learner ID, passed/fail, time.
Can you please guide me what will I need to implement in ASP.NET code to accomplish my goal ?
Task that I have done so far is,
Reading a manifest zip file, unzipping the file and get all information from the file(content name,description,items and launching page) and when user clicks on a particular course a pop up window is launching the page.
I eagerly want to know what I can do next to communicate with the LMS with the APIs. Shall I need to develop my own LMS to get the result,If there is a quiz which is running, all I need to know is the no of questions attempted by the user, whether the user is pass or fail and I need to store all information in the database for individual user so that I can review the result afterwards.
So the task remaining.
Tracking mechanism to deliver the content.
SCORM/LMS sequencing engine that controls the navigation between parts of SCORM conformant course.
Please help.
SLK at codeplex provides a good starting point. However, if you are truly wanting to provide an in-house written SCORM play that is fully compliant, you have a major task ahead of you. In essence there are three party you need to fully develop:
CAM - the unzipping process, which it sounds like you have already achieved.
RTE - the javascript host for SCORM, providing the 8 specified methods. Behind this you also need to implement the SCORM object model, which SLC does help with. If you have implemented all of this, then there should be data entries on the data model that indicate completion etc.
SN - the sequencing and navigation processing. This is significantly the most complex part. I am still in the process of trying to implement this, using SLC, and it is hard. It is the completion of this that will potentially give you more information that will enable you to know what has been done.
it is also worth looking at scorm.com, who are a consultancy, but provide a lot of useful information about the scorm standard.
That is true. SCORM is one of these stadarts where you can implement as little as possible. But you will need some of Javascript with a Backend-Script (JSON to the rescue) so you can track the scorm data, and save it your database.
But let me tell you this: This is the easiest task! Making your own course-creator is a whole other beast.
I've been looking into ASP.NET Dynamic Data and how it does scaffolding and routing. I've only scratched the surface, but it's looking like I'd have to create a template for each table that I didn't want to display all columns the same way.
My first impression after looking at dynamic data is that it would seem like less time on the programmer to have to edit one-time generated user controls rather than build a template for each table that doesn't have a uniform display behavior.
What proven solutions are people currently using that help ease the laborious tasks of creating ASP.NET CRUD type user controls?
Thanks
In ASP.NET webforms we use CodeSmith. From a single entity we generate admin pages, codebehinds, service layers, data layers and db stored procedures. All in a matter of seconds. I'd recommend you check it our for quickly building the crud in your apps.
We're actually working on our own code generation tool. It has already proven to work perfectly on the lower layers and now we're on the way to extend it for the presentation layer, that is for generating user controls.
I've not looked into dynamic data (although I'd like to when I have some time) but my biggest fear is always to lose flexibility. The problem is that these front-ends are then maybe generated dynamically each time based on some template and editing, especially bringing in special customer wishes becomes quite difficult. For small standard apps it may work perfectly though.
What we're therefore doing is to "generate" these usercontrols based on a set of standard custom server controls we've developed, but we'll generate just the first time from some static information about the entities in our application. Then you can continue customizing.
Such systems should help the developer, improving his development speed, doing the initial awkward work but then they should give him the flexibility to modify till the maximum. They should not add additional complexity...
I used .netTiers CodeSmith templates long time ago (years) and it was proven so strong, so, it must be more than great now.
I know a (big) company who have built a customization engine (allowing GUI for internal company options) around those templates to use them in most of their applications and were so successful.
I've used http://www.ironspeed.com/ in the past which has been great. Saved us MONTHS of time on our last project which has a big DB, so the cost is worth it. But it looks a bit ugly and can be tricky to update the DB schema once you've generated.
Obviously not much widespread use out there other than whats provided in Visual Studio.
Have a look at Blinq.
I am working on a design spec for a new application that will be heavily workflow driven.
Before I re-invent the wheel, is there a decent lightweight workflow engine that plugs into ASP.NET already around?
Basically, I'm looking for something that handles moving through a defined set of workflow pages while handling state management automatically.
If this isn't around already, I'll definitely try to abstract the engine from my app and put it on codeplex, as it would be really handy.
Any suggestions?
Note: .NET 2.0, so no WWF, though I think WWF is overkill for my needs.
EDIT: Seems like there is a legitimate need for this, and there isn't a product out there...So I might build this.
Here is what I'm picturing:
Custom Page class called WebFlowPage
All WebFlowPage's are registered in a Workflow mapper.
Each WebFlowPage has some form of state object.
A HttpHandler handles picking the appropriate WebFlowPage based upon the workflow, and populating it from the state object.
Is the workflow dynamic, or static?
If the workflows are simple, you could roll your own workflow engine.
In certain situations, it can be fairly simple, and just a couple of data tables to handle the rules, processing and state.
Alot of workflow engines are built for large scale processing (credit card applications, for example). For small scale, you should at least consider your own, which would eliminate the overhead and dependency of/on an engine.
Not sure exactly what you wish to do here, but Ra-Ajax can easily keep state at least if you want your solution ajaxified...
For reference purposes you might want to check out the Ajax Calendar sample or even the (banalistically implemented) Ajax Wizard sample. It surely beats the hell out of doing it with JavaScript...
And every time you "do something" you're in "server-land" which means you can store temporaries all the time as you wish...
The project is LGPL
(PS!
Yes I do work with it)
Building a custom workflow engine is not trivial, although it may seem simple at first. We've tried that. It depends a lot on the complexity of the logic you need it to cover.
Given the current state of the Windows Workflow Foundation and the lack of another framework that abstracts the workflow concepts, I would choose WF if you need complex logic, asynchronous handling or branches in your workflows.
Tracking your state through the workflow can be accomplished by carrying some kind of xml payload or storing the state in a database,
If your workflow is actually a sequential set of forms that need to be filled in by the user, tracking the steps and guiding the user to the next step can be accomplished with some simple custom solution.
You could take a look at the InRule engine too.
Also, there is nxBRE.
These too are mostly used for business rules.
InRule is proprietary, whereas nxBRE supports RuleML (the defacto standard).
You might need to make your own implementation for the pages, and use the rule engine as the "structure".
At this moment, I know that Sharepoint 2007 supports page workflows (using WF), but this would imply using .NET Framework 3 and deployng sharepoint.
My suggestion would be to use whatever you find more light and easier to use.
I think the term "workflow" is very open to interpretation. I have been working lately with a type of workflow that is very different from what you seem to be describing. Mine is a state machine based workflow where the state of a particular record determines what actions a user can take to move the record to the next step in the business process. So "workflow" in this instance means how the record flows from one state to another until it is finally completed.
Your usage of workflow seems to have more to do with moving a user from one page to another in a linear multi-step process, which is a completely different use case (correct me if I'm wrong). So before coming up with a general purpose "workflow" engine that anyone could use, I would recommend defining a little bit better exactly what types of situations this system would handle.
I've been using this for a few months http://objectflow.codeplex.com. Not asp specific but it may fit your needs
While browsing the web for some workflow & BPM resources, I found the following project: NetBPM. Unfortunately, the project seems to be stopped.
I don't think there is a workflow engine that will automatically handle state for you, but if you are moving through a set of pages like a process such as checkout on an ecommerce site, perhaps the ASP.NET wizard control could help you?
There are few workflow options. "Aspose" and "Skelta" are the offers I´m evaluating.
Fábio
you can use WorkFlow Engine, just read the document and run the Demo.
all of the features you need for a dynamic workflow engine they added in there.
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Visual studio is pretty good but doesn't create stored procedures automatically. Iron Speed designer does supposedly. But is it any good?
I have used Ironspeed extensively for the past two years for most of our ASP.NET forms over data projects.
It works. Does several things well: stored procs, fast layout of table browse and CRUD screens, fast layout of single record CRUD screens. It manages the round-trip (or half-round trip) process decently, detecting changes in your back end db schema and updating its data access layer, then making the changed columns available for you to alter your UI (in record or table control panels). ISD (as they call it) does an excellent job in making security management for your app pretty painless, even down to the control level (if you use ISD's subclassed versions of asp.net controls). Final plus, not a small one, is the CSS-based theme control (easy to change to a variety of themes, easy to customize a particular theme, and not even too bad to build your own theme variant by forking an existing one you like). Depending upon whether you let ISD create your stored procs in the code base or the database, changing DB's at run time can be a piece of cake.
Fairly active forum with a core group of helpful contributors. You can probably avoid the paid tech support through the forum.
Okay, the down sides. Creates fairly large code conglomerations, being a three tiered architecture. As Galwegian says, like any framework, you've got the velvet handcuffs (get your mind out of the gutter if you are thinking about anything other than code limitations and conventions!). The velvet handcuffs are the page and control model, the data layer, lack of a business object/class capability per se, the postback model, and the temptation to make your user GUI look like THEIR user GUI that comes out of the box because it is so darned easy and convenient.
ISD builds a basic page by combining an HTML template (in to which you place ISD specific code generation tags and any other tags, etc., you which using the ISD GUI or by hand). The page model relies upon a code behind page created from a piece of code template. The base classes are almost completely overridable, so that you can override all of the default functions, regenerate the application and not lose your overrides. The database controls live in the page container, but have their own class definitions (i.e., their code-behind) in specific /app_code files. Again, each control type has its own base class with pretty completely overridable methods. A single record control (showing a single db record) is pretty simple. A table, showing several records, has a table class and a table row class. The ISD website (www.ironspeed.com/support) has good documentation of the ISD model as a whole.
So, where are the problems in this model?
1. Easy and tempting to live with their out of the box GUI. Point ISD at your database, pick the tables you want to have it turn in to pages, tell it the kinds of pages, give it a thematic style and five minutes later you're viewing the application. Cool. But, it is very easy to forget that their user GUI is probably not what your user wants to see. So, be prepared to think for yourself and tinker with the GUI thus created. Not hard to do, and you can use VS 2005 to help you.
Business objects. You could put together your own business objects, but it would be difficult and you would get no help from ISD. ISD does a LOT of building of simple validation and checking (appropriate look up values, ranges, lengths, etc.) ISD lets you build custom queries, but these are read-only. It is smart enough (and you can override the write from a page in any case) to let you take a one to many view and write it back to the database (you'd probably override the default base method, but it isn't that hard to do). However, when you get in to serious dependency checking, ISD is still really about tables and not business objects. So, you're going to write some code.
If you are smart, you'll write it once store it in app_code somewhere and use it by calling it from an overridden method in your table or record controls. If you are like most of us, you'll first spaghetti it in to one of the code-behind classes above, and then forget you did so, or have a copy in each of the 10 pages that manipulates customer data. In my world, that has usually meant 5 identical functions and 5 that are all different (even though they are all supposed to be the same). ISD makes it tempting to order marinara, because the model lends itself to spaghetti code. Of course, you can completely prevent this, but you gotta learn the ISD model to determine the best way to do it on your project.
Page state and postbacks. Although ISD is quite open about this problem and tells users not to just take the defaults of returning the whole asp.net page state in the postback stream (cache on the server instead), the default is to return the whole page. Can make for some BIG pages. Which makes users think S L O W. As I said, you can manipulate this. But, what newbie is going to get this when it is SO tempting to just point, click, and boom - instant application. Your manager is now off your back because her product inventory table is "on the web" with a cool search and edit GUI (of 400kb state pages if you've gone a bit nuts and have just taken the default behaviors of ISD). Great in-house, but the customers in the real world....
Again, knowledge is the key. You can fix this, but you need to know you SHOULD.
Database read/write postbacks. No big problem here, but you also need to know that the model is to fetch only the data used at the moment. If your table shows 1000 records in 50 record increments, when you go from records 1 to 50 to 51 through 100, you will postback and hit the database again. This keeps data current, but increases server traffic.
Overall: Try the demo version. Point it at something simple that you really want to turn in to an asp.net application. Build maybe three tables. Then dissect it using the above as a guide. See what YOU think and post back to this question.
I have used it for convenience for a very small project. It did what I wanted and saved me a couple of days work.
The main problem I found was when it came to customising or extending the generated project. You have to spend quite a bit of time trying to understand Ironspeed's way of doing things which, I'll admit, is not my way.
I'd use it again for a small project if I knew in advance I wouldn't have to customise it much after.
If stored procedure generation is all you are after, CodeSmith is a decent option at a fraction of the cost of IronSpeed. There are several sproc templates available, and you can create your own or tweak an existing if that is what you need. You can also gen .Net code to your hearts content with CodeSmith. Tons of business class templates already exist for this.
IronSpeed's value is not in the sproc generation, but in the RAD features. I agree with #Galwegian... IronSpeed is OK for mock ups or very simple apps, not so good at all if you need to do any customization.
You may want to check out Evolutility CRUD framework. It provides some of the same features (limited to CRUD) and is open source.
IronSpeed has been great (out-of-the-box) at helping me develop data-driven corporate Intranet applications. While the code model takes a little getting used to, it is effective at maintaining a nice three-tier app. While the page templates can appear garish compared to 2010's web-design, it gets the job done, when you need function over form.
Iron Speed Designer is great for simple CRUD type web applications. You can find some useful information on our web site http://www.dotnetarchitect.co.uk/