I'm thinking about AWS Step Functions. (Also so many similar workflow things, like .NET 3.5 Workflows). They store state in what in python would be a pickle. They seem to be for programs that take months to run. But why not be stateless and store the workflow steps in a regular database?
Epiphany....
Workflow products are for solving large **bureaucracy** problems. It is a **social** problem. You have 3 huge apps and you need code to call all three of them in a long running script/application. None of the teams want to help you with this feature, maybe none of these 3 teams can call each other directly. So you hack together a visual code "script" that glues together these three *teams*
♡ 3 ↻ 0These tools exist for the same reason low-code programming languages like UIPath exist... your department needs a bug fix or feature in an app, but the team ignores you, has a delivery time horizon of years, the team was all fired 10 years ago. And all you need is a bulk export or some fix that is possible if only you could script the app, even if only via the GUI.
♡ 2 ↻ 0