Terms

Serverless Workflow

• A fully managed serverless Alibaba Cloud service that orchestrates the execution of distributed tasks. You can use Serverless Workflow to arrange tasks to run in sequence, in branches, or in parallel. This ensures that the flow reliably executes tasks in the specified order.

Distributed task

• In Serverless Workflow, a distributed task can be a function, an API of an integrated Alibaba Cloud service, or a program that runs on a virtual machine or container.

Flow

• Defines the business logic and the general information required for flow execution.

Step

• A step is a unit of work in a flow. It can be a simple, atomic step, such as a task, succeed, fail, wait, or pass step. It can also be a complex control step, such as a choice, parallel, or foreach step. You can combine steps to build complex business logic.

Parent step

• If Step A contains Step B, Step A is the parent step.

Child step

• If Step A contains Step B, Step B is the child step.

Task step

• A type of step that defines the information required to invoke a function in Function Compute. Executing a task step invokes the corresponding function.

Pass step

• A type of step that outputs a constant or transforms an input into a desired output. This step is often used to debug flow logic before the actual task steps are created.

Wait step

• A type of step that pauses the execution of a flow. You can specify a relative wait time or an absolute end time as a UNIX timestamp.

Choice step

• A type of step that adds branching logic to a flow, allowing it to execute different steps based on specified conditions.

Parallel step

• A type of step that executes multiple different steps in parallel.

Foreach step

• A type of step that executes multiple identical steps in parallel.

Succeed step

• A type of step that stops a series of serial steps. It is often used with a choice step. When a condition is met, the flow transitions to the succeed step to stop that branch of execution.

Fail step

• A type of step that stops a series of serial steps. When a flow executes a fail step, subsequent steps are not executed, which causes the parent step to fail. The failure then propagates up and eventually causes the entire flow execution to fail.

Flow Definition Language (FDL)

• The language used to define a flow and its business logic. Serverless Workflow executes the steps of a flow according to its FDL definition.

Timed scheduling

• A feature that allows Serverless Workflow to schedule workflows to run at specific times.