Durable Workflows on AWS: Lambda Durable Functions, Step Functions, and MWAA

Short summary

AWS provides three complementary workflow services: Lambda durable functions for code-first orchestration with human-in-the-loop support, Step Functions for cross-service orchestration with native AWS integrations, and MWAA for scheduled data pipelines with backfill. Lambda excels at sequential checkpoint-based workflows, Step Functions at parallel fan-out across services, and MWAA at scheduled multi-step data processing. The article provides five real-world scenarios with decision criteria to match each service to your workload.

• •Lambda durable functions: code-first orchestration, human-in-the-loop waits, top-to-bottom logic flow
• •Step Functions: native AWS service integrations, visual execution tracing, parallel fan-out with Parallel state
• •MWAA: scheduled pipelines, backfill support, SLA monitoring, rich operator ecosystem

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