WIF is framework to claim-enable ASP.net applications and WCF services. WF 4.0 introduced a new paradigm for developing services (known as Workflow Services), whose implementation is based on workflow. Windows Server AppFabric provides the hosting, management & monitoring capabilities for services with a primary focus on workflow services.

WIF integration with Workflow services can be seen at couple of different scopes.

1. Claims-Enabled Workflow Service

As workflow services are standard WCF services, WIF can easily be enabled at the WCF layer using the standard configuration based approach documented in MSDN. This would claims-enable your workflow services and you can use various WIF’s extensions (code-based) for claims-transformation (ClaimsAuthenticationManager) and claims-based authorization (ClaimsAuthorizationManager).

2. Workflow Services calling other Claims-Enabled Services

WF 4.0 provides messaging activities to call other services from workflows. In most cases, Claims-Enabled services require a token from an STS. In a non-WF world, you can either use wsFederationHttpBinding or the new fine grained WIF API (WSTrustChannelFactory) to do this (you can use IssuedSecurityTokenProvider directly). The wsFederationHttpBinding approach kind of works (transparently) in Workflow services world as well but could be quite expensive in terms of performance. See my post on messaging activities for additional details. The wsFederationHttpBinding approach is also not suitable for scenarios, where you need fine-grained control of issued tokens or you want to use issued token in long-running scenarios without re-acquiring them.

3. WIF in middle-tier Workflow Services

WIF enables claims-based-delegation using then ActAs/OnBehalfOf element of WS-Trust protocol. In code-based services, you can access the incoming token in the middle-tier service and then use this when acquiring a SAML token to call a backend service. With this model, the backend service can see all the identities involved in the call chain. Claims-based delegation is not easily possible in workflow services when using wsFederationHttpBinding.

1 & 2 be greatly enhanced by introducing custom activities which can decouple token acquisition from its use; much like activity counterpart of WIF’s WSTrustChannelFactory API.

saml

In above diagram InitializeSamlSecurityToken custom activity encapsulate the functionality of acquiring a token from a STS using the WS-Trust protocol. Internally it uses the standard correlated Request-Reply pair configured for WS-Trust contract. I’ll talk more about TokenFlowScope in a future post but here it enables the Ping activity to use the acquired token when calling a service which requires Saml token. I have attached complete solution with post (STS, Test Service & a Test Client)which also includes alpha drop of WFSP binaries as well. Feel free to download and experiment and let me know your thoughts.