Step Functions: How to share context between Lambdas? - amazon-web-services

I have a data processing workflow like this. The Download task creates a session ID (GUID) and pass it to Parse task and then the Post task. If any exception occurs in these three tasks, the workflow jumps to Failed task. The Failed task would update the status of the process as failed in DynamoDB. To do that, it needs to get the session ID.
Is there any way to pass the session ID to the Failed task?
Or, if the session ID is created outside and passed in to the workflow, is it possible to share this ID to all the tasks?

Specify ResultPath property in the error catcher. By default it is $, which means that output of a failed Parallel State will be only error info. However, if you set ResultPath to, for example, $.error_info then you will preserve state and error data will be accessible under error_info property.
For more details, you may be interested in https://docs.aws.amazon.com/step-functions/latest/dg/concepts-error-handling.html (Error Handling).

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How can I track the progress/status of an asynchronous AWS Lambda invocation?

I have an API which I use to trigger AWS Lambda jobs. Upon request, the API invokes an AWS Lambda job with InvocationType='Event'. Hereafter, I want to periodically poll if the AWS Lambda job has finished.
The way that would fit best to my architecture, is to store an identifier of the Lambda job in a database and periodically check if the job is finished and what its output is. However, I was not able to find how I can do this.
How can I periodically poll for the result of an AWS Lambda job, and view the output once it has finished?
I have looked into using InvocationType='RequestResponse', but this requires me to store a future, which I cannot do in a database.
There's no built-in way to check for the status of an asynchronous Lambda invocation.
Asynchronous Lambda invocation, using the event invocation type, is meant to be a fire and forget job. As such, there's no 'progress' or 'status' to get or poll for.
As you don't want to wait for the Lambda to complete, synchronous Lambda invocation is out of the picture. In this case, you need to write your own logic to keep track of the status.
One way you could do this is to store a (job) item in a DynamoDB jobs table with 2 attributes:
jobId UUID (String attribute, set as the partition key)
completed boolean flag (Boolean attribute)
Workflow is then as follows:
Within your API, create & store a new job with completed defaulting to 'false'
Pass the newly-created jobId to the Lambda being invoked in the payload
When the Lambda finishes, lookup the job associated with the passed in jobId within the jobs table & set the completed attribute of the job to true
You can then periodically poll for the result of the job within the DynamoDB table.
Or take a look at using DynamoDB Streams as a way to know when a job finishes in near-real time without polling.
As to viewing the 'output', AWS Lambda just returns a success response without additional information. There is no 'output'. Store any output you might need in persistent storage - maybe an extra output attribute as a String with each job? - & later retrieve it.
#Ermiya Eskandary's answer is absolutely right.
I am a Dynamodb Subject matter expert, and did this status tracking (also error handling, retry, error logging) pattern for many of my customers
You could check the pynamodb_mate library, it has the status tracker pattern implemented and you can enable that with around 15 lines of code.
in general, when you say you want status tracking, you are talking about the following:
Each task should be handled by only one worker, you want a concurrency lock mechanism to avoid double consumption. (a lot of people didn't aware of this, it is called Idempotent)
For those succeeded tasks, store additional information such as the output of the task and log the success time.
For those failed task, log the error message for debug, so you can fix the bug and rerun the task.
For those failed task, you want to get all of failed tasks by one simple query and rerun with the updated business logic.
For those tasks failed too many times, you don't want to retry them anymore and wants to ignore them. (a lot of people run into endless loop when they deploy to production then realize that it is a necessary feature)
Run custom query based on task status for analytics purpose.
You can read this jupyter notebook example
Basically, with pynamodb_mate your lambda job application code become:
# this is your lambda application code
def lambda_handler(...):
...
# your new code should be:
with tracker.start_job():
lambda_handler()
If your application code is not Python, then you have two options:
create another lambda function that invoke the original one using sync mode. however, you pay more money to run the "caller" lambda function
suppose your lambda code in in Node.js, then add additional lambda runtime as a layer and wrap your node.js caller around a Python function. In short, you are using Python to call node.js.

Camunda process versioning using "Process Instance Modification" migrate call activities

In our project we have problem with camunda process versioning.
We have read some guides and decided to use Process Instance Modification over Process Instance Migration due to limitations that the last approach has.
As we see Process Instance Migration does not allow us to change current variables (based on their previous value, and current wait point we stay), sometimes we only want to change variables because we change delegate executions code and we know that business model (BPMN) haven't bean changed.
So currently I am trying to develop migration framework based on Process Instance Modification.
And first issue I encounter is:
How properly migrate process instance which currently stays on wait point in Call Activity?
For example, I have process:
I start it. One exectuions stays on wait point before Message 1 event. Another gets into Call activity:
And stays there before Message 3 and Message 4.
By using Process Instance Modification I stop processes in Call Activity and then start them again (changing variables, and bpmn model to the latest). How can I attach them to the parent process instance which called Call activity in the first place, to make it return back to the parent process instance (which called Call activity) and proceed with processing (executing Task 6). What if I want to migrate parent process as well?

What determines a "transient error" in AWS Athena query `FAILED` states?

According to https://docs.aws.amazon.com/athena/latest/APIReference/API_QueryExecutionStatus.html it states that
Athena automatically retries your queries in cases of certain transient errors. As a result, you may see the query state transition from RUNNING or FAILED to QUEUED.
As such, when a query execution is in a FAILED state, how can one determine (ideally from the API) if it is a transient error (and thus will transition back to RUNNING or QUEUED) or not?

"Error: error - Service Unavailable" while running any job via oracle Apex Page

I am executing a external job using DBMS_SCHEDULER through apex page by clicking a button in below manner.(Dynamic action=>Execute PlSql)
dbms_scheduler.run_job(job_name => 'APEXDATA.myJobName', use_current_session=> TRUE);
Its executing the external job correctly.(taking 1-2 minutes).My issue is that, in between the time while its executing i can not able to access any other page or can not able to login with new session nothing.showing below error in every task i am performing.
**503 Service Unavailable
The connection pool named: |apex|| is not correctly configured, due to the following error(s):
Exception occurred while getting connection: oracle.ucp.UniversalConnectionPoolException:
All connections in the Universal Connection Pool are in use**
Is this the general or known issue?if yes how to resolve the issue,because in same time other user also has to perform any other task or other may login same time.
Thank You.
I think you're mixing 2 things that hard to combine:
Dynamic actions are designed to submit code from the page without a page submit so the user can continue to work on the page after he has done something (eg run pl/sql code)
Running a process in the database that takes up the database session until it is completed ( use_current_session=> TRUE). Your dbms_scheduler.run_job process will run in the current session and as long as that job is running no other operations can be run in that database session (the connection is in use as shown in the error message).
Solutions:
use_current_session=> FALSE so the job runs in the background
In the dynamic action, set "Wait for result" to true, so the user is forced to wait until the job completes.
Execute the job on page submit which will also force the user to wait for the job to be completed.
Since your job takes 1-2 mins to complete, options 2 and 3 are probably not feasible because the user experience is not optimal. If you execute the job in the background, then you probably need to write some additional code to prevent the user from clicking a couple of times and submitting the job multiple times. You could do that by checking if the job is running before you submit it and not submit it if it is currently running.

How to send TaskSuccess to the right activity with AWS Step Functions?

So, I'm working on a state machine. It can have up to 20 or 30 executions of it running at the same time, with different parameters.
One of it's states is an activity worker (needs to wait for some input from another step function execution started from one of it's states through a lambda function, since you can't directly start a new execution from a state machine).
I know how to send a "Task Success" for an activity. But how can I make sure it's sent to the right execution ?
Using a pub/sub service such as mqtt would be useful here.
Generate a UUID in the lambda that spawns the new execution.
Pass the UUID to the new execution and return it to the activity worker.
The new execution writes the UUID and result to the queue once it's done.
The activity worker reads from the queue and uses the UUID to find the right message.
Depending on the design of your state machine, you may also be able to pass the current activity's taskToken as an input parameter when your activity creates a new StepFunction execution. Then the last state in the sub-execution can call Task Success for the state in the parent execution using the taskToken passed in, returning any result data as the results for that state. (Don't forget the last state would also have to call Task Success for itself as well.)