Orchestrating the Pipeline

Turning a set of jobs into a dependable line: Step Functions, Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow, EventBridge and Glue workflows compared on the axes that actually decide between them — dependency complexity, failure semantics, retry and idempotency, cost at idle, and who maintains the DAG.

Content current as of 2026-10.

Lessons

1. Choosing an orchestrator
2. Step Functions for data workflows
3. MWAA and Airflow DAGs
4. Event-driven triggers
5. Failure, retry, and idempotency

Sources

• AWS Step Functions developer guide — Map state processing modes
• AWS Step Functions developer guide — standard vs express workflows
• Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow user guide
• Amazon EventBridge Scheduler user guide
• Amazon S3 user guide — Amazon S3 Event Notifications