Step Functions

Question 1

What problem do Step Functions seek to solve?

Answer 1

Provide long-running, serverless workflows.

Question 2

What are State Machines within Step Functions?

Answer 2

A serveless workflow that starts, transits intermediate states, and then ends.

Question 3

What is the maximum duration for State Machine execution?

Answer 3

One year.

Question 4

What are the two types of workflows available when defining a State Machine?

Answer 4

Standard Workflow - default, one year execution limit.

Express Workflow - high volume event processing workloads (like IoT, stream data process, etc.), five minute execution limit.

Question 5

What states are available in a State Machine?

Answer 5

1. Succeed and Fail - a final state
2. Wait - do nothing for a period of time or until a specific data and time.
3. Choice - take a different path based on input
4. Parallel - perform multiple actions at the same time
5. Map - take a list and perform an action on each item in the list
6. Task - a single unit of work performed by a state machine (Lambda, DynamoDB, ECS, SNS, etc.)