Making OS call from workflows

Community Support
,
1

Hi Team,

Curious to know whether is it acceptable to make some OS calls from workflows ? Few use-cases can be as below but not limited to:

  1. Accessing an env variable and using the same to upsert in search attribute.
    Further, given the value of the env variable can change over the time, I am planning to use sideffect here.
  2. Initiating a command using Exec(). Given maintaining idempotency in activity is complicated here, is it fine to perform command execution from workflow itself ? Again performing this via sideeffect to make sure singleton execution of the same.

Will these use-cases be considered an anti-pattern ?

2

Hello @nitesh237

for 1) I would use sideEffect or local activity, and if the returned value is null you might want to fail the workflow

for 2) I would local activity or normal activity. How long the command takes to be executed?

In general, any IO operations should be placed in activities

Antonio

3

Assuming the command execution will be fire and forget kind, will it be ok ? Or activity route is the recommended way ?