'Dublin' Manages Workflows and Web Services

Dublin is a set of extensions to Windows Server for hosting and managing Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) workflows and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Web services. It will include tools for auto-starting, monitoring, and updating WF and WCF components, among other capabilities. Administrators will be able to take advantage of these capabilities through a PowerShell scripting API, or through extensions to IIS Manager, the administrator console that it also used for managing the Windows Web server. All of these capabilities will be valuable for organizations that use WF and WCF on a large scale.

Dublin overlaps with some aspects of Microsoft’s BizTalk Server application integration and business-to-business commerce product. In particular, both Dublin and BizTalk Server enable large-scale deployment, updating, and monitoring of Web services and workflows. However, Dublin focuses exclusively on WF and WCF, while BizTalk Server uses a different workflow technology (called Orchestration) and can employ a large array of messaging technologies in addition to WCF. BizTalk Server also has many other capabilities, such as the ability to manage Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) processes and processes that employ Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. In general, developers building new applications on WF and WCF could be better served by Dublin and Windows Server, while developers will probably turn to BizTalk Server for integrating existing applications and automating standardized business processes through EDI.