Software Alternatives & Reviews

AWS Step Functions VS Apache Spark

Compare AWS Step Functions VS Apache Spark and see what are their differences

AWS Step Functions logo AWS Step Functions

AWS Step Functions makes it easy to coordinate the components of distributed applications and microservices using visual workflows.

Apache Spark logo Apache Spark

Apache Spark is an engine for big data processing, with built-in modules for streaming, SQL, machine learning and graph processing.
  • AWS Step Functions Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-29
  • Apache Spark Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-12-31

AWS Step Functions videos

Orchestrating Distributed Business Workflows with AWS Step Functions - AWS Online Tech Talks

More videos:

  • Review - AWS Step Functions: Parallelism and concurrency in Step Functions and AWS Lambda
  • Review - AWS Step Functions: Workflows for development and testing

Apache Spark videos

Weekly Apache Spark live Code Review -- look at StringIndexer multi-col (Scala) & Python testing

More videos:

  • Review - What's New in Apache Spark 3.0.0
  • Review - Apache Spark for Data Engineering and Analysis - Overview

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to AWS Step Functions and Apache Spark)
Project Management
100 100%
0% 0
Databases
0 0%
100% 100
Web Service Automation
100 100%
0% 0
Big Data
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare AWS Step Functions and Apache Spark

AWS Step Functions Reviews

Top 8 Apache Airflow Alternatives in 2024
This service suits for many use cases, such as building ETL pipelines, orchestrating microservices, and managing high workloads. AWS Step Functions is particularly efficient when combined with other AWS solutions: Lambda for computing, Dynamo DB for storage, Athena for Analytics, SageMaker for machine learning, etc.
Source: blog.skyvia.com
10 Best Airflow Alternatives for 2024
AWS Step Functions enable the incorporation of AWS services such as Lambda, Fargate, SNS, SQS, SageMaker, and EMR into business processes, Data Pipelines, and applications. Users and enterprises can choose between 2 types of workflows: Standard (for long-running workloads) and Express (for high-volume event processing workloads), depending on their use case.
Source: hevodata.com

Apache Spark Reviews

15 data science tools to consider using in 2021
Apache Spark is an open source data processing and analytics engine that can handle large amounts of data -- upward of several petabytes, according to proponents. Spark's ability to rapidly process data has fueled significant growth in the use of the platform since it was created in 2009, helping to make the Spark project one of the largest open source communities among big...
Top 15 Kafka Alternatives Popular In 2021
Apache Spark is a well-known, general-purpose, open-source analytics engine for large-scale, core data processing. It is known for its high-performance quality for data processing – batch and streaming with the help of its DAG scheduler, query optimizer, and engine. Data streams are processed in real-time and hence it is quite fast and efficient. Its machine learning...
5 Best-Performing Tools that Build Real-Time Data Pipeline
Apache Spark is an open-source and flexible in-memory framework which serves as an alternative to map-reduce for handling batch, real-time analytics and data processing workloads. It provides native bindings for the Java, Scala, Python, and R programming languages, and supports SQL, streaming data, machine learning and graph processing. From its beginning in the AMPLab at...

Social recommendations and mentions

AWS Step Functions might be a bit more popular than Apache Spark. We know about 57 links to it since March 2021 and only 56 links to Apache Spark. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

AWS Step Functions mentions (57)

  • Serverless Data Processor using AWS Lambda, Step Functions and Fargate on ECS (with Rust 🦀🦀)
    There are a few ways to solve this of course but one solution I wanted to explore is using AWS Step Functions (https://aws.amazon.com/step-functions/) to drive the whole process. Step Functions is a serverless workflow orchestration system. One part of it is support for a distributed map mode where you can run many parallel operations over a set of data. There are different approaches you can use to get the list... - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • The Energy Drink Episodes 3: The Step Function Awakens
    If you have ever spoken to me, read anything I've written or listened to any talks I’ve done in relation to Serverless or infrastructure as code, there is a high likelihood that I have confessed my love for Step Functions. Even when unprompted. Putting my biases aside, however, there are some legitimate reasons we can consider using them in our app. If you are new to Step Functions or just fancy a refresher, have... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Testing Serverless Applications on AWS
    For context; the web application is built with React and TypeScript which makes calls to an AppSync API that makes use of the Lambda and DynamoDB datasources. We use Step Functions to orchestrate the flow of events for complex processing like purchasing and renewing policies, and we use S3 and SQS to process document workloads. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Customizing error handling in Step Functions
    If we have to coordinate multiple function calls, we can use AWS Step Functions to orchestrate the workflow. Step Functions integrates with many other AWS services, but here I'll focus on Lambda functions. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Amazon Ditches Microservices for Monolith: Decoding Prime Video's Architectural Shift
    Amazon's tool was broken into three main components: the media converter, defect detectors, and orchestration. The media converter ran as an AWS Lambda function, converted audio and video streams, and stored the data in an S3 bucket. The defect detectors, also running as an AWS Lambda function, would pull the parsed data from the S3 bucket and analyze the frames and audio for any issues. Finally, the orchestration... - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
View more

Apache Spark mentions (56)

  • Groovy 🎷 Cheat Sheet - 01 Say "Hello" from Groovy
    Recently I had to revisit the "JVM languages universe" again. Yes, language(s), plural! Java isn't the only language that uses the JVM. I previously used Scala, which is a JVM language, to use Apache Spark for Data Engineering workloads, but this is for another post 😉. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • 🦿🛴Smarcity garbage reporting automation w/ ollama
    Consume data into third party software (then let Open Search or Apache Spark or Apache Pinot) for analysis/datascience, GIS systems (so you can put reports on a map) or any ticket management system. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Go concurrency simplified. Part 4: Post office as a data pipeline
    Also, this knowledge applies to learning more about data engineering, as this field of software engineering relies heavily on the event-driven approach via tools like Spark, Flink, Kafka, etc. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Five Apache projects you probably didn't know about
    Apache SeaTunnel is a data integration platform that offers the three pillars of data pipelines: sources, transforms, and sinks. It offers an abstract API over three possible engines: the Zeta engine from SeaTunnel or a wrapper around Apache Spark or Apache Flink. Be careful, as each engine comes with its own set of features. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Spark – A micro framework for creating web applications in Kotlin and Java
    A JVM based framework named "Spark", when https://spark.apache.org exists? - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing AWS Step Functions and Apache Spark, you can also consider the following products

Zapier - Connect the apps you use everyday to automate your work and be more productive. 1000+ apps and easy integrations - get started in minutes.

Apache Flink - Flink is a streaming dataflow engine that provides data distribution, communication, and fault tolerance for distributed computations.

Nintex - Cloud-based digital workflow management automation platform

Apache Airflow - Airflow is a platform to programmaticaly author, schedule and monitor data pipelines.

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

Hadoop - Open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing