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Show HN: Free hosted open-source alternative to Zapier/Airflow

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Re: Show HN: Free hosted open-source alternative to Zapier/Airflow

#21

Post by lewisjoe »

sixhobbits wrote: post #14

I've used Zapier a fair amount and I wrote an article about Airflow so I have a fairly good understanding of that too. I would never really consider them alternatives though? To me Zapier is a low/no code tool that offers a bazillion integrations and Airflow is a workflow orchestration tool. So comparing to both of them confuses me and I guess choosing one would give you a more nieche audience but one that you can co…

Very true. We really should stop overloading the term Workflow in software.

As of now these are the broad categories that abuse the term workflow.

1. State Machines

For example in Jira a bug/ticket moves through different states to reach a final stage. This type of state-machines can be found in a lot of different softwares - most CMS/bug-trackers/CRMs where the entity is different (document/bug/lead).

The motive of these systems who call themselves as workflow engines - is to provide a structure to an otherwise ad-hoc movement of entities so that a lead/manager is able to ensure a process and collect statistics.

2. Automations

For example "apple workflow" app or Zapier or Zoho Flow. These softwares define a sequence of steps that are triggered when an event occurs in the system.

The motive of these systems are to enable automation and integrations between different software components with zero code (thus, no-code).

3. Process Designers (Bad term but can't think of anything better at the moment)

For example Airflow/Camunda. These systems are not necessarily low-code but they mostly deal with arranging individual components of code such that a process can be assembled as quickly as possible. These systems usually are accompanied by a visual designer like what Zapier has, but the intentions are mostly to ease out the process, than being a complete no-code tool to create automations. However, their marketing tries to sell themselves as no-code platform for business folks.

The motive is not yet very clear to me but from my initial intuition they can be used to initiate some data-processing pipeline, I guess? If anybody can throw more clarity, please leave a reply.

Now as you can see, much like how a "Process" can mean many things in many different context, the term "Workflow" can mean a lot depending on the context. Any software that calls itself the ultimate workflow solution is just a lie. It's like calling something an "ultimate process engine" - doesn't make sense.

Re: Show HN: Free hosted open-source alternative to Zapier/Airflow

#22

Post by j45 »

newcrobuzon wrote: post #16
sixhobbits wrote: post #14

I've used Zapier a fair amount and I wrote an article about Airflow so I have a fairly good understanding of that too. I would never really consider them alternatives though? To me Zapier is a low/no code tool that offers a bazillion integrations and Airflow is a workflow orchestration tool. So comparing to both of them confuses me and I guess choosing one would give you a more nieche audience but one that you can co…

This is a very good point. My current line of thinking is: A workflow is a workflow is a workflow . Titanoboa is built the way that pretty much everything it shuffles is data - and either it can be big (Airflow) or the steps can have side effects (iPaaS/Zapier). The "no code" is achievable since adding more predefined steps is not that hard (there's not that many at the moment though) - see for instance https://githu…

Keep converging and building.

I have been experimenting with combinations of huggin, camunda, airflow and others to try and achieve an integrated workflow/state/process management.

There exists a gap in the enterprise space between all these tools.. and it has been further exacerbated by the disruption introduced to many industries by covid. There is a real opportunity for small and medium businesses to be able to access tooling that is beyond what a base line Zap, etc can accomplish.

Would be happy to connect offline.

Re: Show HN: Free hosted open-source alternative to Zapier/Airflow

#24

Post by mfateev »

lewisjoe wrote: post #21
sixhobbits wrote: post #14

I've used Zapier a fair amount and I wrote an article about Airflow so I have a fairly good understanding of that too. I would never really consider them alternatives though? To me Zapier is a low/no code tool that offers a bazillion integrations and Airflow is a workflow orchestration tool. So comparing to both of them confuses me and I guess choosing one would give you a more nieche audience but one that you can co…

Very true. We really should stop overloading the term Workflow in software. As of now these are the broad categories that abuse the term workflow. 1. State Machines For example in Jira a bug/ticket moves through different states to reach a final stage. This type of state-machines can be found in a lot of different softwares - most CMS/bug-trackers/CRMs where the entity is different (document/bug/lead). The motive of…

Which bucket temporal.io and Azure Durable Functions that support `workflow as code` do fall into?

Re: Show HN: Free hosted open-source alternative to Zapier/Airflow

#26

Post by Grimm1 »

lewisjoe wrote: post #21
sixhobbits wrote: post #14

I've used Zapier a fair amount and I wrote an article about Airflow so I have a fairly good understanding of that too. I would never really consider them alternatives though? To me Zapier is a low/no code tool that offers a bazillion integrations and Airflow is a workflow orchestration tool. So comparing to both of them confuses me and I guess choosing one would give you a more nieche audience but one that you can co…

Very true. We really should stop overloading the term Workflow in software. As of now these are the broad categories that abuse the term workflow. 1. State Machines For example in Jira a bug/ticket moves through different states to reach a final stage. This type of state-machines can be found in a lot of different softwares - most CMS/bug-trackers/CRMs where the entity is different (document/bug/lead). The motive of…

"However, their marketing tries to sell themselves as no-code platform for business folks."

Huh? I've never seen Airflow described as no code or tried to sell itself that way, in fact all the pipelines are written in python and you can do some really complex orchestration.

I get you're not saying Airflow is no code but that the category you've put it in is typically low code or marketed as low code, but then I don't think Airflow belongs in that category or rather, and maybe more accurately, no/low code is not really a major defining quality of the bucket you're calling "Process Designers".

I've also been calling them "Process Schedulers" because typically it involves translating a more manual, but well defined process into it's automated phase.

Re: Show HN: Free hosted open-source alternative to Zapier/Airflow

#28

Post by newcrobuzon »

newcrobuzon wrote: post #6

Wow, this has blown up a bit, so I have added few more servers (now two servers on the West coast and two in Europe), but ultimately I think there is a limit cap of 100 Titanoboa instances in each geography in parallel. So if we break that level please don't be mad if you don't get your instance :) Instead give me a star on github and come back later :) Cheers Miro

Ok, I have just reached 100 concurrent containers in Europe, which is max at this stage and I don't think I can change the aws limit on the fly (will check though) so I might start killing the oldest instances.

Apologies for inconvenience folks, but I am sure people rarely play with each instance for the whole 3 hours anyway at this stage.

Honestly did not expect this kind of "public beta" rollout, still surprised how well the service holds so far under the load.

Re: Show HN: Free hosted open-source alternative to Zapier/Airflow

#29

Post by newcrobuzon »

j45 wrote: post #22
newcrobuzon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very good point. My current line of thinking is: A workflow is a workflow is a workflow . Titanoboa is built the way that pretty much everything it shuffles is data - and either it can be big (Airflow) or the steps can have side effects (iPaaS/Zapier). The "no code" is achievable since adding more predefined steps is not that hard (there's not that many at the moment though) - see for instance https://githu…

Keep converging and building. I have been experimenting with combinations of huggin, camunda, airflow and others to try and achieve an integrated workflow/state/process management. There exists a gap in the enterprise space between all these tools.. and it has been further exacerbated by the disruption introduced to many industries by covid. There is a real opportunity for small and medium businesses to be able to ac…

Thanks! Will reach out when the traffic subsides :) Or feel free to shoot me an email, my email address is on the web page.

Re: Show HN: Free hosted open-source alternative to Zapier/Airflow

#30

Post by newcrobuzon »

j45 wrote: post #23

Being a JVM friendly tool, it would be great to unlock other JVM syntaxes to allow scripting in any lanugage.. Jython for Python, Quercus for PHP, JRuby for Ruby, etc.

yes, I am considering this and it should not be that hard (also Kotlin, Nashorn javascript...), but at this stage Titanoboa is just a one-man-show - so patience, I might get there ;)
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