Update 4.0.1 for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 – Runtime Update

Windows Workflow Foundation 4 State Machine Activity

The state machine is a well-known runtime model that is used across the industry to model event-driven systems.

With this platform update, customers can use a state machine model to model their business processes by using a simplified API and design experience from the Windows Workflow Foundation 3 (WF3) State Machine.

This update includes the following new features for WF4 State Machine:

• Entry and exit actions for a state

• Conditional and default transitions that have transition actions

• Scoped variables for a state machine

• Improved tracking support

This platform update also introduces the following features for the Workflow Designer:

• Auto connect

• Auto insert

• Aggregate State and Transition views that aid configuration and navigation

For more information about how to use the Workflow State Machine, visit the following Microsoft websites:

Workflow4 State Machine MSDN documentation
Workflow4 State Machine samples

SQL WF4 Instance Store (SWIS) on SQL Azure

With this platform update, Workflow 4 customers can use SQL Workflow Instance Store together with SQL Azure. For SQL Azure, this update changes the following:

• The existing schema installation Sqlworkflowinstancestoreschema.sql script uses an unsupported allow_page_locks keyword. Because of the unsupported keyword, an installation of SQL Workflow Instance Store fails when you try to install SQL Workflow Instance Store to be used together with SQL Azure. This update removes the keyword in some conditions by using an updated script.

• The retry mechanism of SQL Workflow Instance Store is not customized for SQL Azure. Therefore, the computer encounters some potential reliability issues if the network fails periodically or if the connection is lost. In order to handle this issue, this update contains the following features:
  

  • The behavior and configuration elements for a new public MaxConnectionRetries property are exposed in the SqlWorkflowInstanceStore class. Users can configure the max number of reconnection attempts for SQL connections that are based on the network characteristics. The default value is three retries at a 1-second interval in order to stay consistent with the .NET Framework 4 for typical SQL Server deployments. We recommend that you set the values in the configuration or code to a value that is larger than 15 for SQL Azure.

  • The following new set of error codes are added to the retry logic in SQL Workflow Instance Store. These error codes are specific to SQL Azure scenarios.
    

    Error code	Error message
    40197	The service has encountered an error processing your request. Please try again.
    40501	The service is currently busy. Retry the request after 10 seconds.
    10053	A transport-level error has occurred when receiving results from the server. An established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine.
    40613	Database database name on server server name is not currently available. Please retry the connection later. If the problem persists, contact customer support, and provide them the session tracing ID of session tracing ID.
    20	The instance of SQL Server you attempted to connect to does not support encryption.

Enable custom workflow hosts to use WF4 compensation

This platform update introduced new activities to model compensation behavior in WF4. In order to make a long-running process, these activities rely on the CompensationExtension extension that can be used from our primary WorkflowServiceHost host to save and reload the necessary state from persistent storage. This feature can be used by a customer who is interested in introducing a new workflow host that requires compensation. The new CompensationExtension type is exposed after you apply this update.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 support

In order to develop applications on Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) by using any of the new features in this update, you have to also install the following update:

2495593 Update 4.0.1 for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 - Design-Time Update for Visual Studio 2010 SP1 After you apply this update, you can obtain a Multi-Targeting pack that supplies the reference assemblies for IntelliSense and for compilation that support the new functionality in this runtime update. This update also provides you the design-time support for a StateMachine workflow by using the StateMachine workflow designer.

Prerequisites

To install this update, you must have the following software installed:

• Windows Installer 3.1 or a later version.
  To obtain the latest version of Windows Installer, visit the following Microsoft website:
  

  Download Windows Installer 4.5 Redistributable

• Microsoft .NET Framework 4 or Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile

Note Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Platform Update 1 – Runtime Update is a targetable framework and is built for the .NET Framework 4. This update is not a cumulative framework version.

Command-line switches for this update

For information about the various command-line switches that are supported by this update, visit the following Microsoft website:

227091 Command-Line Switches for the Microsoft Windows Installer ToolFor more information about Windows Installer, visit the following Microsoft website:

General information about Windows Installer

Restart requirement

This update does not require a system restart after you apply the update unless the files that are being updated are locked or are being used.

Update removal information

To remove this update, use Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel.

Update replacement information

This update does not replace a previously released update.

File information

The global version of this update uses a Microsoft Windows Installer package to install the update. The dates and the times for these files are listed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in the following table. When you view the file information, the date is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time item in Control Panel.