Amazon Simple Workflow Service (SWF) allows building scalable and resilient distributed applications. It provides a programming model and framework for coordinating tasks across distributed application components through workflow executions and processes. SWF handles task scheduling, execution, and tracking to enable applications to coordinate work across services and data centers without managing infrastructure.

1. Amazon SWF
http://aws.amazon.com/swf
Balan Subramanian
Sr. Product Manager
balans@amazon.com
© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

2. Introducing Amazon SWF
Simple Workflow Service
Enables scalable, resilient, truly distributed applications
Run application workflows and business processes in
the cloud
Durable, distributed state management
Accessible anywhere from any programming language
Programming model and framework
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

3. When to use Amazon SWF
Dispatch tasks to application components
Coordinate distributed application processing
Implement ordered execution of application steps
Manage application state during distributed execution
Reliable, auditable periodic execution
Asynchronous invocation and event-driven execution
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

4. Why we built Amazon SWF
Application control flow logic = workflow
Orchestration: foundational need for business process
implementations and distributed applications
Reliable task dispatch & state management are difficult
Lack of task based programming models
Developers shouldn’t have to build plumbing for orchestration
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

5. Emerging Needs
Asynchronous interactions and loosely coupled design
Applications that run across datacenters and clouds
Efficient resource usage, selective scalability
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

6. Amazon SWF for cloud applications
Build applications with components that run anywhere,
anytime and even intermittently
Think tasks, not messages
Focus on application logic and save development effort
Take applications to market faster
Scale gradually and pay only for what you use
Use resources efficiently by scaling selectively
Reduce infrastructure and administration costs – you no
longer need to run orchestration infrastructure
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

7. Business processes with Amazon SWF
A reliable and durable foundation for your implementations
Elastic scalability for business process executions
Build tailor made implementations and add your own value
Start with minimal cost, Scale economically
Remove infrastructure and administration costs
Leverage SWF from your existing toolsets, modeling frameworks
Partner with SWF and drive your own innovation!
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

8. How Amazon SWF works
Example use case: Video transcoding application
Start > Encode video > Add DRM protection > Finish
Get task
Amazon Worker for
Long Poll
Web Server Front End SWF encoding
Accepts video URL, Start Workflow Execution
Starts execution with URL
Encode Tasks Return results
DRM Tasks
Return decisions
Decision Tasks
Get task
Long Poll
Long poll Worker for
Execution History
Decisions: Get task adding DRM
- Input data (Video URL)
1. Schedule encoding of the video
- Encode task complete
2. Schedule DRM protection DECIDER Return results
- DRM task complete
3. Complete execution Makes decisions on what tasks
- Execution complete
to schedule, when, in what order
© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

9. What Amazon SWF provides
Non-duplicated, at most once task delivery
Task queuing and routing
Timeout and execution status tracking
Consistent state management
Individually tracked executions and tasks
Durable long running executions
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

10. Using Amazon SWF
Determine
Write workers Start workers
application flow
for activities and deciders
and activities
Write deciders Start
Setup domains to drive executions
application flow
Determine View
Write workflow executions in
workflow and
initiator code the console
activity types
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

11. AWS Management Console
Manage domains and types
View and work with executions
Fine grained execution details
Audit retained workflows
Use workflow execution metrics
to monitor and react
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

12. Features
Timers
Signals
Tags
Markers
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

13. More Features
Child workflow executions
User data and execution results
Flexible task distribution with task lists
Retention
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

14. AWS Flow Framework
Entire workflow looks like simple, sequential code
Abstracts polling, scheduling tasks, remote execution
Easy to program complex dependencies
 Simple method call to asynchronously execute an application step
 Express dependencies by passing output of one task as input of another.
 Handle remote failures as standard exceptions
Uses Amazon SWF as the backend
Open-sourced on Github.
Currently in Java. Soon in more languages.
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

15. Pricing
Pay for application ‘resources’ when you use them
How many workflows you run, what you do when they
run, how long they run, how long they are retained
$1 for 10,000 workflow executions when started
$0.25 for every 10,000 chargeable actions
$0.05 per day for every 10,000 workflows that run past a
day or are retained
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

16. Pricing Example
25,000 files encoded and protected, each workflow runs for 12 hours and
execution history is retained for 2 days
Starting 25,000 workflow executions: 25,000 x $1/10,000 = $2.50
Scheduling 10 tasks per workflow: 10 x 25,000 x $0.25/10,000 = $6.25
Running 25,000 workflow executions (12 hours each) = $0.00
Retaining 25,000 workflows for 2 days: 25,000 x $0.05/10,000 x 2 = $0.25
Total: $9
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

17. Pricing in different usage scenarios
Short running application executions
• Number of application workflow executions
• Application steps executed for each application execution
• # of days for which you retain each execution trace for debugging
Long running business processes
• Number of workflows started
• Days, weeks, or months that the workflow runs
• Tasks scheduled, timers set, # of checkpoints (markers), signals
• # of days executions are retained for auditing/analytics
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

18. Use cases
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

19. Amazon SWF @ Sage Bionetworks
Cross-cloud execution
Controlled task routing
Long running executions
Visibility
Support for different
programming languages
Case Study
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20. Amazon SWF @ NASA JPL
Process gigapixel Mars
rover images in minutes
Quickly move processing
to cloud on demand
Complex data processing
workflows
Parallel image processing
Infrastructure automation
Case study
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

21. Getting Started
Console sample walkthrough
Flow framework samples
Free Tier
Forum
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

22. Thank You!
For more information:
aws.amazon.com/swf
balans@amazon.com
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© 2012 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.