thinking-out-loud

Synchronous Workflow Invocation

In Windows Workflow Foundation, there is a built-in activity called InvokeWorkflow that asynchronously launches another workflow.  But then you have to wait for it to complete.  I've heard a couple of people complain about no built-in support for synchronous invocation and am at a point where I need it myself.  I came across this post from Jon Flanders where he has already solved the problem by writing a synchronous CallWorkflowActivity and made it available for download.

Strongly Signing Assemblies in VS2005

I'm writing custom workflows and workflow activities using Windows Workflow Foundation.  To be used in SharePoint v3/2007, the assemblies have to be installed in the Global Assembly Cache.  And as with any assembly installed in the GAC, they must be strongly signed.

Here's a nice little article walking you through most of the steps to sign an assembly in Visual Studio 2005.  One step they left out is creating the GUID with the Tools > Create GUID... menu item in the IDE.  First, create a GUID in registry format and copy it to the clipboard with the Copy button.  Then paste it into the Assembly Info dialog as shown (but not explained) in the article.  You probably have to manually remove the { and }, so I did.

CS2007 Generally Available...mostly

Earlier this month, Ryan Donovan announced that Commerce Server 2007 has been released to market.  Tomorrow we should see a CTP and then in October we should have the official release of the Starter Site, so we can actually see how to use it.  But earlier Ryan said in regards to SharePoint integration, "do not look for guidance before SharePoint 2007 releases".

So, we have an RTM'ed CS2007, which supposedly integrates beautifully with MOSS, but no guidance on how to do it.  Nice. 

However, I did read in Ryan's earlier post on CS and content management (where he told us SharePoint and CS would work together so beautifully) that "the Starter Site's runtime controls can be easily repurposed to be deployed in a next-generation SharePoint portal site."  So I'm going to give it a try.  Of  course, I do realize that it's way too early to be mucking around with CS and MOSS.  Sadly, I'll probably have to change direction to some lame InfoPath product order form.  But after the hell we went through figuring out custom workflow in MOSS, we can't really afford much more exploration on my current project.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Eye tracking

Seth Godin links to some eye tracking videos of squidoo, and draws conclusions that slight bad design is perhaps better than good design. Interesting.

On an only somewhat related line of thought, I have often thought that regex was a great technology not so much for what it does but for how it forces you to interact with it. Regex can be mind-bending and difficult to write by hand, and I always have to go in small incremental steps using lots of test cases. But it is amazingly powerful.

Virtual PC and Virtual Server

If you use Virtual PC or Virtual Server at all, you might want to take a gander at Cameron Fuller's new blog. He just started posting, so there isn't a lot there yet, but every post is useful reading.