description Temporal Overview
Long-running business processes are the focus of Temporal, a workflow orchestration platform built around durable execution. Developers express workflows in code, and the platform records their execution history so progress can be recovered after failures. A process can last seconds or remain active for days or months, including periods spent waiting for another system or a human decision. Temporal suits applications whose business logic spans multiple steps and external API calls.
Its distinction from a basic job queue is the ability to preserve workflow progress and coordinate retries across an extended process. Recovery uses recorded history rather than saving every instruction, and external operations still need careful handling when retries occur.
help Temporal FAQ
What happens in Temporal if a worker crashes mid-workflow?
Temporal stores workflow state in an event history, so another worker can resume from the last recorded step instead of starting from scratch. That durable execution model is the core difference between Temporal and a simple background job queue.
Is Temporal closer to Airflow, Celery, or Kubernetes CronJobs?
Temporal overlaps with job queues and schedulers, but it is built for long-running code workflows that can survive retries, crashes, and time gaps. Airflow is usually used for data pipelines, while Celery and CronJobs are more basic task execution tools.
Which programming languages can use Temporal?
Temporal has official SDKs for languages including Go, Java, TypeScript, Python, and PHP. Teams usually write workflows and activities in normal application code rather than in a separate DSL.
Can Temporal workflows run for months?
Yes, Temporal is designed for workflows that can run from seconds to months because timers and state are persisted outside the worker process. A common example is an order, subscription, or onboarding flow that waits days between steps.
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