We have been thinking about using AWS Step Functions for approval workflows that can run tasks with callbacks and wait for human actions and other time-consuming actions. Documentation for Step Functions says there are hard quotas for maximum execution time, which is 1 year. This seems like reasonable limitation.

However, we were not able to find any information about what happens to pending executions once Step Functions is updated. Is there any way how to upgrade existing executions to newer version of workflow definition? For executions that run for longer period of time, there is high probability of encountering requirements that need to update of fix workflows, so it's natural to update execution plan for those that are not yet finished.

Does AWS Step Functions support that? If not, what's recommended pattern (and source for some information) how to deal with long running executions?

Thanks

CodePudding user response：

I have found piece of documentation saying that the current execution finishes under the previous definition.

When you update a state machine, your updates are eventually consistent. After a few seconds or minutes, all newly started executions will reflect your state machine's updated definition and roleARN. All currently running executions will run to completion under the previous definition and roleARN before updating.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/step-functions/latest/dg/getting-started.html#update-state-machine