AWS Step Functions

AWS Step Functions is an orchestration service that can be integrated with many other Amazon services, such as Lambda and SNS. Using Step Functions, we can create workflows—known as state machines—where each state can be integrated with a service.

Apart from service integrations, states can also perform several different kinds of actions, such as evaluating conditional statements and choosing between different branches of execution. They can also pass data through to the following state, perform different actions in parallel, or iterate over steps.

State machine executions are asynchronous—they can pause for extended periods (up to a year) while waiting for a callback to resume execution. To achieve this, the state machine creates a task token and pauses execution. It then waits for a callback, including the same token, to resume.

Workflows in Step Functions

AWS Step Functions support two types of workflows: standard and express. In a standard workflow, each step is executed exactly once (unless retrying is specified in the ASLAmazon stats Language), and these workflows can run up to a year. These workflows are ideal for long-running auditable workflows.

However, in express workflows, each step is executed at least once, and there is a chance some ...