I'm confused. I'm an avid reader of several Sharepoint related Blogs and everybody says "don't use State Machine Workflows in .NET 3.5 anymore - they will not exist in .NET 4".
Reading up on the topic, .NET 4.0 does not support State Machine Workflows, but uses Flowchart WFs instead. Fine.
Now there is the Platform Update 1 - which introduces State Machine Workflows again. Also the announcement about the "new" state machine functionality doesn't say much about the why - seems like we have State Machine WFs again.
My question: Did Microsoft add state machine workflows back into the mix or is this a totally "new" state machine workflow activity (relating to compatibility). Was this move due to customer pressure of people complaining not having state machine workflows anymore? I'm basically looking for some kind of explanation of why there suddenly are state machine workflows in .NET 4 (with Platform Update 1). And: Will they stay (.NET 5) or is this a temporary move?
PS: Also take a look at the official State Machine Guidance Whitepapers, they basically still say if you are using state machine's in 3.5 - use Flowcharts now.
The StateMachine in WF4 is similar to the one in WF3 but WF4 is completely different so the differences are there in the state machine as well.
We wanted to ship a the StateMachine in WF4 but had to cut it in order to make the release date. Our plan was always to ship it as soon as possible.
As for the StateMachine Guidance Whitepaper - it just never got updated. I'll see if we can take care of that now.