AWS Step Functions
- What it is
- Serverless workflow orchestration. Coordinates multiple AWS services into a visual state machine.
- Manages state, retries, error handling, parallel branches, and wait steps for you.
- Two workflow types
- Standard — up to 1 year duration, exactly-once execution, full history. For long-running business processes.
- Express — up to 5 minutes, at-least-once, very high volume, much cheaper. For streaming and IoT ingestion.
- Why it matters
- Removes glue code: no chaining Lambda functions by hand, no writing your own retry and state-tracking logic.
- The visual workflow doubles as documentation and as an audit trail of every execution.
- Not to be confused with
- Amazon EventBridge — routes individual events; no notion of a multi-step process with state.
- AWS Batch — runs the heavy compute; Step Functions sequences it.
- AWS Glue workflows — ETL-specific orchestration; Step Functions orchestrates any service.