This document introduces Temporal, a workflow engine, to engineers unfamiliar with its capabilities. Its aim is to demonstrate Temporal’s value for potential use in upcoming projects. Definitions Workflow - “At the highest level, workflows tend to be modeled as a set of activities invoked in some sequence where the completion of one activity flows directly into the start of the next activity.” Source Workflows vs Sagas Presentation Activity - “An Activity is a normal function or method that executes a single, well-defined action (either short or long running), such as calling another service, transcoding a media file, or sending an email message.

Managing multiple versions of your tooling can get quite difficult and tedious. There are solutions for specific languages such as Pipenv and Conda for Python. The downside is that you have 2 different package management systems associated with each and you’ll have to reach for a different tool to manage versions of a different programming language. Enter ASDF, the Multiple Runtime Manager. ASDF allows you to configure your tooling in a single config file per project.

At a previous (unnamed) company, I had the privilege of working on a core search project. The goal of this project was to simplify the architecture and reduce the latency in updating the search index based on user actions. In retrospect, this project could have gone a lot better if we had made use of tools and patterns that I learned after leaving the company. I think the team did the best with what we had available to us.