AWS Step Functions provides server less orchestration for modern applications. Orchestration centrally manages a workflow by breaking it into multiple steps, adding flow logic, and tracking the inputs and outputs between the steps. As your applications run, Step Functions maintains the application state, tracking exactly which workflow step your application is in, and stores an event log of data that is passed between application components. That means if the workflow is interrupted for any reason, your application can pick up right where it left off.
What is State?
Step Functions is based on state machines and tasks. A state machine is a workflow. A task is a state in a workflow that represents a single unit of work that another AWS service performs. Each step in a workflow is a state.
States are elements in your state machine. A state is referred to by its name, which can be any string but it must be unique within the scope of the entire state machine. Individual states can make decisions based on their input, perform actions, and pass output to other states.
States can provide a variety of functions in your state machine:
Perform some work in your state machine.
Make a choice between branches of activity.
Stop an activity with a failure or success.
Simply pass its input to its output or inject some fixed data.
Provide a delay for a certain amount of time or until a specified time or date.
Begin parallel branches of activity.
Dynamically iterate steps.
Different types of states
AWS Step Functions supports eight different types of states. Choose the image to learn about each state and choose the arrows to go through each state in the stack.
Why Use AWS Step Functions?
AWS Step Functions helps with any computational problem or business process that can be subdivided into a series of steps. Application development is faster and more intuitive with Step Functions, because you can define and manage the workflow of your application independently from its business logic. Making changes to one does not affect the other. You can easily update and modify workflows in one place, without having to struggle with managing, monitoring, and maintaining multiple point-to-point integrations. Step Functions frees your functions and containers from excess code, so you can write your applications faster and make them more resilient and easier to maintain.
Step Functions features
Step Functions is a AWS managed serverless service. To learn more about the serverless service features, such as scaling, availability, pay per use, and security and compliance, choose each of the four tabs.
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