Wanted: XAML for Spatially Enabled Workflows

After working with XAML for a couple of months now, I’m shifting gears to enhance a data exporter I wrote several years ago.

I sure wish there were examples of spatially enabled Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) applications for this sort of thing. The glamor of Silverlight/WPF is overshadowing a lot of useful things XAML offers for workflow. David Chappell has a good overview of WF here. Indeed, it seems like XAML could be used to implement a lot of the vision outlined by Paul Torrens in his ArcNews article.

What I’d like to see is a thin-client IDE where I could graphically design spatially enabled workflows on a remote server. A good example would be a parcel notification system on a municipal web site. Instead of relying on city staff to write apps, a web site could be provided to allow citizens to design workflows around city activities that impact them. Maybe what is needed is a Spatial Activity Library (SAL) to complement the lower level Base Activity Library. Perhaps each geoprocessing function in ArcToolbox could be wrapped and made available in a SAL and published by ArcGIS Server.