Tutorials Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Jun 24, 2025 4 min read

First Step Function

Workflow.

Initial setup

AWS Console or CLI: create state machine with Amazon States Language definition. Standard JSON or YAML format.

Two execution types: Standard (long-running, billed per state transition) and Express (high-throughput, billed by duration).

Standard for orchestration of human-paced workflows; Express for high-frequency event-driven workflows.

Sequence of Lambda invocations: Task states with Resource pointing at the function ARN. Each completes; output flows to the next.

Choice state for branching. Conditional logic based on previous output.

Map state for fan-out. Iterate over an array; each element processed in parallel.

Catch blocks for specific error types. Retry, fall back, or terminate based on the error.

Retry policies: exponential backoff with max attempts. Built-in; declarative.

Fallback states: catch errors and route to a different state. Useful for graceful degradation.

CloudWatch logs per state machine execution. Trace through state transitions.

X-Ray integration. Distributed tracing across Lambda invocations within a state machine.

Per-execution UI: visual graph of execution path; click states to inspect inputs and outputs.

IaC for state machine definitions: Terraform, CDK, or SAM. Don't click-build production.

Version control state machine definitions. Reviewed via PR.

Test executions in development environment before promoting. Step Functions supports TestState API for state-level testing.