Support translating workflow spec to other DSLs

[taoj-action]

What would you like to be added:
Support translating workflow spec to other DSLs, such as ASL and/or Conductor DSL.

Why is this needed:

We have a large investment in modeling in ASL and in-house workflow engine (not distributed one). We are not using Step Function. Now, we are moving to Conductor but its DSL is different than ASL. Moving to Conductor DSL from ASL creates vendor-specific dependency. The CNCF’s serverless workflow looks very promising and it would be much better for us to move to serverless workflow spec. We may not ready in moving to a serverless solution yet but adding a translation layer to let serverless workflow run on a regular workflow engine such as Temporal, Conductor, or ASL for Step Functions would be ideal.

[evankanderson]

Additionally, this use case would make it easier to adopt the workflow definition from serverless workflows for teams which already have an investment in an existing platform.

[tsurdilo]

@taojwmware @evankanderson thanks for opening this issue!
I think this is definitely something we can look into. Since Serverless Workflow is currently a super-set of ASL and Conductor DSLs I guess not all features can be translated. Do you guys know how often those DSLs get updated/change?

Would you be willing to help us with this effort? I don't think we will be able to add this any time soon without some help, as this is a pretty big undertaking imo.

[tsurdilo]

Wanted to ask about >> Moving to Conductor DSL from ASL creates vendor-specific dependency. <<
The way I understand you were already vendor-locked with ASL ( on the dsl side at least :) That's why I think our specification has a ton of value.

[evankanderson]

ASL actually provides a local implemention, so it's not as vendor-locked as it might seem. 😁

In terms of handling missing capabilities, the first version might be to error out on missing capabilities, and then slowly introduce shims (i.e. external functions) to implement the missing features as demand arises.

[tsurdilo]

@evankanderson what programming lang are you guys using?
We could try to work on a POC with our Node/Java SDKs to read in Serverless Workflow json/yaml and spit back out ASL.

[tsurdilo]

Does ASL have a JSON Schema definition?

[taoj-action]

I am not sure about the ASL JSON schema part but only found https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2016/12/01/J2119-Validator and https://states-language.net/spec.html instead.

[antmendoza]

I can try to do a small POC, might need help for sure, since I am not familiar with any of them ASL/ Conductor DSL.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[svudutala]

@antmendoza Thank you for the response. Do you need anything from our end to help on POC?

CC: @taojwmware

[antmendoza]

Hi @svudutala no sorry I have been working in the sdk-typescript, and still there is some work to do.

If no one is working on this in 2/3 weeks I could start something.