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Sequential Workflows

The sequential workflow style executes a set of contained activities in order, one by one. You can add other composite activities to a sequential workflow to achieve parallelism (ParallelActivity), event-driven parallelism (EventHandlingScopeActivity), data-driven execution (ConditionedActivityGroup), event-driven branching (ListenActivity), and familiar imperative control flow patterns such as conditional branching (IfElseActivity) and iteration (WhileActivity, ReplicatorActivity). You can also utilize the extensibility of Windows Workflow Foundation to write custom composite activities that implement whatever specific control flow patterns your solutions require.

The following flowchart shows an example of a sequential workflow.

Example of a sequential workflow

A sequential workflow executes activities in a sequential manner until the last activity finishes. Sequential workflows are not necessarily completely deterministic, even under normal operation. For example, you can use a ListenActivity activity or a ParallelActivity activity, and the exact sequence of events can vary in these cases.

For more information about workflow authoring, see Workflow Authoring Styles.

See Also

Concepts

Workflow Authoring Styles
State Machine Workflows

Other Resources

Windows Workflow Foundation Activities
Developing Workflows