This week I contacted DevExpress directly for the first time to ask about their plans relating to workflow.
Recently, I have been doing a great deal of custom XAF work in the area of workflow and the modelling of business processes, aspects of which could be at odds or duplicate functionality to be included in future XAF versions.
My request was forwarded to Oliver Sturm from DevExpress and his response included the answer ...
"Multi-step UI of various kinds is one thing that will be covered."
I responded and asked what that is - to which he responded ...
"It means wizards, batch data entry, that kind of thing - UI that presents the end user with multiple steps to perform some operation."
Well that to me is so vague as to be useless in regards my original question, such that I said I didn't understand, and could he explain?
Well, the response I got back questioned why I couldn't understand it, along with a beginners description of what a workflow is. A response I found rather condescending.
Hardly helpful. I'm reminded of something I was once told - "don't forget your only a customer".
4 comments:
Alex,
I don't disagree with your reaction or interpretation of his tone. However, I interpret his responses to mean what I've called and referred to as "screen flow" or UI-flow. I've worked with and helped build custom workflow engines and to me true workflow models a business process and includes multiple actors not a single user. Windows Workflow Foundation has a good overview of workflow in general and the different types of workflows (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb628449.aspx)
I've noticed that Oliver Strum is condescending in many of his forum / support posts as well. I'm not the only one; other people I've talked with have noticed the same thing!
I think maybe it's a cultural thing (German?). Oh man, I hope that doesn't sound culturally insensitive. :-) I can't imagine he's trying to be rude, but SOOO many of the things I read that he writes sound downright rude.
Hey, maybe he'll read your post and/or my comment and post a surly reply. :-)
Workflow integration was a very visible selling point during the beta and is still part of the marketing hype. To me, Oliverto have become bored (or frustrated) with XAF and the current shortcomings of his designs once they hit the real-world and devs started asking tough questions.
I'm really tired of his super-basic tutorial videos that show (over-and-over-and-over) the thin surface of XAF but never dig deep to help us solve real-world problems.
Well well, guys, thanks for that discussion. I'll try not to sound too condescending, or surly.
Alex, let's reiterate our communications, just to have things complete:
Alex: "Is it possible to receive information on the intended implementation and integration of Workflow in XAF?"
Oliver: "[... quite a lot cut ...] ... There's a second part to our plans though, which focuses on single-user use cases. Multi-step UI of various kinds is one thing that will be covered. I can't tell you any more details about it at this time, because it doesn't yet exist."
Alex: "Just one thing, what is a "Multi-step UI of various kinds ..."?"
Oliver: "It means wizards, batch data entry, that kind of thing - UI that presents the end user with multiple steps to perform some operation."
Alex: "I don't understand this. How does this relate to workflow? ..."
Oliver: "A workflow is a sequence of steps towards a goal – decisions that are being made based on state, input that is requested as needed through the process and so on. That's exactly the same thing that a wizard does, for instance, in any typical Windows application, wouldn't you say? Batch data entry is a similar thing, where several steps are required to complete the entry process, with logic being executed in between to take over data from one record to the next, calculate new default values, and so on.
If you implement a wizard or a batch entry process, to stay with these two examples, manually, you end up writing some sort of state machine. Windows Workflow foundation supports state machine type workflows. Sounds close, doesn't it?"
I think these were the parts of our conversation relating to the question at hand. Furthermore, of course, I apologized for whatever it was that offended you about my tone, in another email.
I guess there's nothing more that makes sense for me to add to this thread, but I felt that if you wanted this discussion to take place in public, the record should be complete.
Regards
Oliver Sturm
Developer Express
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