Overview

State machines allow you to design and automate business processes and data pipelines by composing workloads (functions, batch-jobs) or other AWS services into workflows. State machines manage failures, retries, parallelization, service integrations, and observability so developers can focus on higher-value business logic.

When to use

• Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process - state machines ensure that long-running, multiple ETL jobs execute in order and complete successfully, instead of manually orchestrating those jobs or maintaining a separate application.

• Orchestrate microservices - use state machines to combine multiple functions into responsive serverless applications and microservices.

Define states

Definition of state machines is written using Amazon states language.

Amazon states language syntax allows you to to specify any workflow from easy ones to most complex ones.

The following example shows an order-payment flow made up of lambda functions:

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resources:
  checkAndHoldProduct:
    type: function
    properties:
      packaging:
        type: stacktape-lambda-buildpack
        properties:
          entryfilePath: 'check-and-hold-product.ts'

  billCustomer:
    type: function
    properties:
      packaging:
        type: stacktape-lambda-buildpack
        properties:
          entryfilePath: 'bill-customer.ts'

  shipmentNotification:
    type: function
    properties:
      packaging:
        type: stacktape-lambda-buildpack
        properties:
          entryfilePath: 'shipment-notification.ts'

  eshopBuyingProcessStateMachine:
    type: 'state-machine'
    properties:
      definition:
        StartAt: 'checkAndHold'
        States:
          checkAndHold:
            Type: Task
            Resource: $ResourceParam('checkAndHoldProduct', 'arn')
            Next: bill
          bill:
            Type: Task
            Resource: $ResourceParam('billCustomer', 'arn')
            Next: notify
          notify:
            Type: Task
            Resource: $ResourceParam('shipmentNotification', 'arn')
            Next: succeed
          succeed:
            Type: Succeed

Retry example

The following example shows:

• generateReport - batch-job which generates report.
• uploadReport - function that uploads generated report.
• reportStateMachine - state machines that ties above compute resources together.

State machine definitions provide great flexibility. In this case, reportStateMachine only retries upload part of our workflow, since regenerating the report (in case of upload failure) would be costly and redundant.

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resources:
  uploadReport:
    type: function
    properties:
      packaging:
        type: stacktape-lambda-buildpack
        properties:
          entryfilePath: 'upload-report.ts'

  generateReport:
    type: 'batch-job'
    properties:
      container:
        packaging:
          type: stacktape-image-buildpack
          properties:
            entryfilePath: generate-report.ts
      resources:
        cpu: 2
        memory: 7800

  reportStateMachine:
    type: 'state-machine'
    properties:
      definition:
        StartAt: 'generate'
        States:
          generate:
            Type: Task
            Resource: 'arn:aws:states:::batch:submitJob.sync'
            Parameters:
              JobDefinition: $ResourceParam('generateReport', 'jobDefinitionArn')
              JobName: report-job
              JobQueue: $Param('SHARED_GLOBAL', 'BatchOnDemandJobQueue::Arn')
            Next: upload
          upload:
            Type: Task
            Resource: $Param('uploadReport', 'LambdaFunction::Arn')
            Next: succeed
            Retry:
              - ErrorEquals:
                  - 'State.ALL'
                IntervalSeconds: 10
          succeed:
            Type: Succeed

Referenceable parameters