Amazon Web Services Inc. today introduced Workflow Studio, a new low-code development tool aimed at reducing the amount of time and effort required to build applications on its public cloud.

Workflow Studio is available as part of the Amazon.com Inc. unit’s AWS Step Functions service. The newly announced tool also uses the AWS Lambda serverless computing platform. 

AWS has added numerous services and features to its cloud over the years to make application development easier. One of the most significant milestones was the 2014 introduction of the Lambda platform, which popularized a concept known as serverless computing. Serverless computing offerings such as Lambda allow developers to write a code snippet that performs a certain task, run it in the cloud and not worry about managing the underlying infrastructure.

AWS took the concept a step further in 2017 by launching Step Functions, the service of which the new Workflow Studio announced today is part. In Lambda, each code snippet usually performs a single task, such as calculating the total value of a customer’s purchases.

With Step Functions, developers can combine several Lambda code snippets into workflows that perform not just one but multiple tasks. These workflows, in turn, can be used by developers to build complex enterprise applications such as payment processing services and analytics tools.

Workflow Studio makes it easier to create Step Functions workflows for enterprise applications. Previously, the only way to use the service was to learn a programming syntax called the Amazon States Language that AWS had developed specifically for the task. With Workflow Studio, developers can create serverless workflows for their applications through a drag-and-drop interface.

“Workflow Studio simplifies the building of enterprise applications such as ecommerce platforms, financial transaction processing systems or e-health services,” explained AWS senior developer advocate Marcia Villalba. “It abstracts away the complexities of building fault-tolerant, scalable applications by assembling AWS services into workflows.”

A company building an application for monitoring industrial equipment could use the tool to build a workflow that analyzes hardware error alerts. The workflow could consist of one Lambda code snippet that determines the severity of the error, another that notifies technicians and a third designed to filter duplicate alerts. It’s also possible to mix in other AWS services besides Lambda to automate additional tasks. 

The steps that make up a workflow appear in the Workflow Studio interface as a series of interconnected boxes. Developers can add more boxes, representing additional tasks to be performed by their software, via drag and drop controls. They can customize each processing step via a low-code menu.

Developers likewise have the option to customize how the different processing steps interact with one another. For example, a workflow could include a Lambda code snippet that removes errors from raw data and then reroutes the data to a different code snippet for analysis. It’s also possible to activate several code snippets simultaneously or the same one multiple times.

“Workflow Studio is great for developers who are new to Step Functions, because it reduces the time to build their first workflow and provides an accelerated learning path where developers learn by doing,” Villalba said. “Workflow Studio is also useful for developers who are experienced in building workflows, because they can now develop them faster using a visual tool.”

AWS believes Workflow Studio should prove particularly handy for software prototyping. Developers can harness the tool’s easy-to-use visual controls to quickly cobble together a workflow representing the tasks that an application performs and then continue the project from there. 

Image: AWS