Monday, March 25, 2013

Event Receivers vs Workflows - Decide Which One to Use

As SharePoint Event Receivers & SharePoint workflows has lot of similarities, Many people stuck on deciding which one to go with: Event Receiver or Workflow?

Main Differences Between SharePoint Event Receivers and SharePoint Workflows are:

1. Event handlers Can't be manually initiated - workflows can be initiated either automatically or manually.

2. Event Handlers can be Synchronous or Asynchronous - Workflows are always async (They executes after the operation)

3. In Event Receivers we can cancel the operation (such as add/update/delete) - But in Workflows its not possible.

4. Event handlers execute from a Particular WFE, So when some thing goes wrong in that WFE, It may end-up. But Workflow Jobs are robust and  can resume even after Reboots.

5. Usually Event handlers runs for short period - Workflows can be longer even for years!

6. There is no User Interface/user Interaction in Event Receivers - Workflows can have user interactions such as getting user input in Initiation forms.

7. As the Name indicates, SharePoint Event receivers are triggered by events like New Item Adding-Added, Updating-Updated, Deleting-Deleted, etc. - But Workflows triggered only on Creation/Change/deletion.

8. Event Receivers are created using Visual studio - Workflows can be via SharePoint user interface, SharePoint Designer, Visio or Visual studio.

9. Workflows leaves "Workflow History" logs which we can refer for debugging - Event handler doesn't do such.

10. Event receivers are better for large volume - Workflows are better for small amount of data.

This one from Codeplex:

[Click on the picture to Enlarge]
Thanks to: https://spdevguide.codeplex.com

MSDN version: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff649084.aspx


Read more: http://www.sharepointdiary.com/2012/08/event-receivers-vs-workflows-decide.html#ixzz2OWg7H5yj

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