Programming

Step Functions: combine Standard and Express workflows for fun & profit

AWS, Serverless, Step Functions

Step Functions’ state machines come in two flavours. By understanding their strengths and limitations, you can harness the combined power of both to optimize your processes for efficiency and cost. Standard Workflows Optimal for: Business-critical operations like payment processing. Strengths: Suitable for low-throughput scenarios. High maximum duration ensures enough time for retries using exponential backoff. …

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What’s the most serverless way to wait for a slow HTTP response?

AWS, Lambda, Serverless

Every now and then you are faced with an awkward situation where you need to wait for a slow HTTP response and it can take more than 15 mins. Using Lambda is impractical because of the 15 mins timeout, and very cost ineffective because you will be paying for all that idle time by the millisecond.

If not Lambda, what’s the most serverless way for you to wait for a sloooow HTTP response?

Are we getting infrastructure all wrong in the Serverless era?

AWS, Serverless

In my last conversation with Ben Kehoe on the real-world serverless podcast, he said something profound and it’s been bugging me ever since. And now I’m ready to infect you with this brain bug! You’re welcome ;-) On the infrastructure-from-code trend, Ben said: “I think infrastructure-from-code is wrong on all counts. I don’t think we should …

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Testing Step Functions: how to skip time when testing Timeout and Wait states

AWS, Programming, Serverless, Step Functions, Testing

When I previously wrote about testing Step Functions, I gave you a general strategy that consists of: Component tests that target the Lambda functions (specifically, the custom code you wrote in those functions). End-to-end tests that execute the state machine in the cloud. Local tests using Step Functions Local where you can use mocks to …

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No, you don’t need to test every line of your CDK application

AWS, CDK, Programming, Serverless, Testing

Several people have asked me about unit testing CDK applications recently. The questions often go something like this: “Because it can be in Python or TS, people bring up unit testing for CDK, whereas it’s not even thought about with Serverless Framework, SAM or Terraform. What are your thoughts on this?” “I have so many …

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Are You Ready for This? Top 5 Earth-Shattering Pros and Cons of AWS CDK

AWS, CDK, Serverless

Ask most developers why they like the CDK and they will say “It lets me write infrastructure in my favourite programming language”. That’s nice, but why should that be a consideration for an Infra-as-Code (IaC) tool? That’s like saying “I like Strepsils because it tastes like candy”. ps. if you mention candy, pharmacy staff would …

Are You Ready for This? Top 5 Earth-Shattering Pros and Cons of AWS CDK Read More »

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