Temporal: Durable Workflow Orchestration for Modern Applications

Temporal has become the standard for building reliable distributed applications. It provides durable execution guarantees, making it easy to build fault-tolerant workflows.

Core Concepts

• Workflows: Long-running, durable functions
• Activities: Short-lived tasks that can fail
• Workers: Processes that execute workflows
• Signals: External input to running workflows

Building a Workflow

// workflows.ts
import { proxyActivities } from "@temporalio/workflow";
import type * as activities from "./activities";

const { sendEmail, chargePayment, fulfillOrder } = proxyActivities<typeof activities>({
  startToCloseTimeout: "1 minute",
  retry: { maximumAttempts: 3 },
});

export async function orderWorkflow(order: Order): Promise<void> {
  await chargePayment(order.paymentDetails);
  await sendEmail(order.customerEmail, "Payment confirmed");
  await fulfillOrder(order.id);
  await sendEmail(order.customerEmail, "Order shipped");
}

Why Temporal?

1. Automatic retries with exponential backoff
2. Workflow state persisted automatically
3. Survives process crashes and restarts
4. Built-in visibility and debugging