CloudFlow:Functions and features

Feature set

Feature

Description

References

Basic features

Flow

CloudFlow uses the Flow Definition Language (FDL) in the YAML format to describe and define flows. To execute a flow, CloudFlow parses and executes states based on the flow definition. A flow contains multiple states. These states can be simple atomic states, such as Task, Succeed, Fail, Wait, and Pass, or complex control states, such as Choice, Parallel, and Map.

• Flow definition
• Create a flow
• Execute a workflow

Schedule

Workflow scheduling (a trigger) is a method to trigger a workflow. In an event-driven computing model, event sources are event producers and workflows are event handlers. Workflow scheduling provides a centralized and unified way to manage different event sources. In an event source, when an event that meets the rules defined by the workflow scheduling occurs, the event source automatically invokes the workflow that is associated with the workflow scheduling.

• Overview
• Time-based scheduling
• EventBridge event scheduling

Application

The Application Center module in the old CloudFlow console is a management and development platform for workflow applications in a serverless architecture. The module enables easy deployment and modular application building. The module provides a convenient, efficient, and integrated environment in which you can develop, deploy, and manage workflow applications based on the serverless architecture. This reduces the workloads of infrastructure management and allows you to focus on the development and innovation of core business logic.

Advanced features

Standard mode

CloudFlow allows you to create workflows in standard or express mode. Standard mode is suitable for conventional offline workflow orchestration and execution. This mode supports the persistent storage of execution states and execution state transition of long-running workflows.

Express mode

CloudFlow allows you to create workflows in standard or express mode. Express mode is suitable for common online workflow orchestration and quasi-real-time workflow orchestration in latency sensitive and load intensive scenarios such as microservices API orchestration, glue layer API orchestration, and stream processing.

O&M and observability

Log/Events

After a workflow is executed, you can view the metrics about the workflow. You can also configure alert rules to monitor the statuses of the workflow. For example, you can configure an alert rule that triggers an alert to be sent to the designated contact when a flow fails a specified number of times.

Metrics

CloudFlow imports monitoring metrics to the CloudMonitor agent. You can understand the execution and state transition of workflows based on the monitoring metrics.

Flow development

Workflow Studio

CloudFlow provides a low-code, graphical workflow designer known as Workflow Studio. You can use Workflow Studio to create and edit a workflow, configure input and output filtering rules for steps in the workflow, and configure error handling rules.

Workflow Toolkit For VS code

Aliyun Serverless VSCode Extension is a VSCode graphical tool that is used to develop and debug functions in Function Compute and operate Function Compute resources.

Workflow Debug

CloudFlow provides the Workflow Local capability that allows you to debug workflows on an on-premises device. You can move the pointer over a state node and click the execution icon on the right to debug the state node. After the debugging is complete, you can view the debugging result.

Integration

Cloud service integration

CloudFlow can be integrated with multiple Alibaba Cloud services. You can call the API operations of the cloud services to perform operations on related resources in a flow and complete workflow building. The integration types include normal integration and optimized integration. Normal integration: CloudFlow calls the API operations of cloud services without packaging or optimizing the API operations. CloudFlow can call up to 10,000 API operations of cloud services. Optimized integration: Frequently used API operations of cloud services are packaged and optimized before CloudFlow calls the API operations in OpenAPI. This simplifies the invocation of the API operations and the service integration.

• Overview
• Service integration modes
• Integrate CloudFlow with Function Compute
• Integrate CloudFlow

General integration

General integration is normal integration. In general integration, CloudFlow is integrated with the API operations provided by Alibaba Cloud services in the OpenAPI platform of Alibaba Cloud. CloudFlow does not process and optimize the API operations of the services. To implement workflow orchestration, CloudFlow can call the API operations of Alibaba Cloud service categories, such as elastic computing, storage services, databases, containers, big data processing, and observability services and middleware.