General
What is CloudFlow?
CloudFlow is a fully managed service for coordinating distributed tasks. You define business logic as a series of steps -- foreach, choice, and parallel -- and CloudFlow handles execution tracking, state management, and automatic retries. Built-in logging and auditing provide full visibility into every flow execution, making it straightforward to diagnose and debug applications.
How does CloudFlow work?
You create a flow that orchestrates function resources and specify the input and output for each step. Built-in control steps add conditional branching, parallel execution, timeout handling, or early termination.
CloudFlow provides a graphical interface that visualizes each execution in real time: the sequence of steps, the current status, and a detailed history of every run.
What are the advantages of CloudFlow?
Built-in orchestration: CloudFlow avoids repeated orchestration, maintains step and execution state, handles distributed task communication, and provides visual tools for flow design and monitoring.
Cross-environment coordination: Coordinate applications written in different languages, running on different infrastructures or networks. CloudFlow supports migration between hybrid clouds, from Apsara Stack or private cloud to a hybrid cloud and then to public cloud, and from monolithic to microservices architectures.
Fully managed with pay-as-you-go pricing: No infrastructure to maintain. CloudFlow is secure, highly available, fault-tolerant, and highly durable. Flows at any scale run at high concurrency, with scaling transparent to users. You pay only for step transitions.
Visual execution tracking: A graphical interface displays flows and execution status, giving business teams, developers, and O&M staff a shared view that reduces back-and-forth communication.
Execution
How long can a flow run?
A single flow execution can run for up to one year.
How do I run a flow?
You can run a flow in three ways:
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| CloudFlow console | Run flows directly from the web interface. |
| API or SDK | Call API operations or use the CloudFlow SDK to start executions programmatically. |
| Function Compute | Use Function Compute to trigger flows and process data from different event sources. |
Flow definition
What language do I use to define a flow?
CloudFlow provides Flow Definition Language (FDL) to help you implement business logic as compiling program code.
For syntax details and examples, see Flow Definition Language overview.
Integrations
Does CloudFlow integrate with Cloud Monitor?
Yes. CloudFlow sends flow execution metrics to Cloud Monitor, where you can track them and set alert rules.
Does CloudFlow support event-driven execution?
CloudFlow is not integrated with event sources. Instead, cloud services integrated with CloudFlow act as event producers. To forward events to CloudFlow, call the StartExecution API operation through Function Compute.
For details on configuring event triggers, see Triggers.