What it is: A serverless workflow orchestration service that coordinates multiple AWS services (often multiple Lambda steps).

What it’s for:

• Build reliable multi-step processes (order flow, ETL, approvals).
• Handle retries, timeouts, error handling, and branching.

Key ideas:

• You define a state machine describing steps and transitions.
• Common patterns:
  • sequential steps
  • parallel steps
  • choice/branching
  • retries/catch

Exam cues:

• “coordinate multiple Lambda functions with retries and error handling” → Step Functions.
• “workflow with several steps” → Step Functions.

Hard words:

• *workflow* /ˈwɝːkfloʊ/: luồng công việc
• *orchestration* /ˌɔːrkəˈstreɪʃn/: điều phối
• *state machine* /steɪt məˈʃiːn/: máy trạng thái
• *branching* /ˈbræntʃɪŋ/: rẽ nhánh