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Temporal Nexus - Temporal feature

SUPPORT, STABILITY, and DEPENDENCY INFO

Temporal Nexus is available in Public Preview for Temporal Cloud and self-hosted deployments.

Connect Temporal Applications​

Nexus allows you to connect Temporal Applications across (and within) isolated Namespaces. This provides all the benefits of Durable Execution across team and application boundaries with improved modularity, security, debugging, and fault isolation. Nexus supports cross-team, cross-domain, cross-namespace, and multi-region use cases.

Why use Nexus?​

Unlike other forms of inter-service communication, Nexus combines a familiar programming model with the resiliency of the Temporal Platform and its queue-based Worker architecture.

Benefits​

  • Integrated Temporal experience - with improved security, observability, and reliability.
  • Microservice contracts - suitable for sharing across teams or domains.
  • Abstract and share underlying Temporal primitives - like Workflows, Signals, or Updates.
  • At-least-once execution guarantees - with support for exactly-once execution using Workflow policy.
  • Improved security and blast-radius isolation - with separate Namespaces for each team or domain.
  • Modular design - for streamlined multi-team development.
  • Custom handlers - that execute arbitrary code.
  • No error-prone boilerplate code - with Temporal SDK support to build and use Nexus Services.
  • Same queue-based Worker architecture - so no bespoke service deployments are needed.

Use cases​

  • Cross-team, cross-domain, and cross-namespace - Nexus is purpose-built to connect Temporal Applications within and across Namespaces. It addresses the limitations of Child Workflows, Activity Wrappers, and bespoke APIs that target a remote Namespace; such as leaking implementation details, second-class observability, overly-permissive security, and error-prone boilerplate code. Nexus has a streamlined Temporal developer experience, reliable execution, and integrated observability.

  • Share a subset of a Temporal Application - Abstract and share a subset of an Application as a Nexus Service. Nexus Operations can span any length of execution, be synchronous or asynchronous, and be implemented with Temporal primitives, like Workflows, Signals, or Updates. Expose Services on a Nexus Endpoint for others to use and secure them with access control policies. Nexus Endpoints decouple callers from handlers, so teams can operate more autonomously.

  • Modular design for growth - Temporal Nexus enables a modular application design that can evolve as you grow. Start with Nexus Services in a monolithic Namespace and move Services to separate Namespaces with small configuration changes.

  • Smaller failure domains - When teams operate in the same monolithic Namespace, everything is available to everyone, and mis-behaving Workers can trigger rate limits that affect all teams operating in that monolithic Namespace. Nexus enables each team to have their own Namespace for improved security, troubleshooting, and fault isolation.

  • Multi-region - Nexus requests in Temporal Cloud are routed across a global mTLS-secured Envoy mesh. Built-in Nexus Machinery provides reliable at-least-once execution and Workflow policy can deduplicate requests for exactly-once execution, even across multi-region boundaries.

Key features​

  • Familiar developer experience - Temporal SDKs provide an integrated way to build and use Nexus Services.

    • Use Nexus Services from a caller Workflow.
    • Run Nexus Service handlers in a Worker, often the same Worker as underlying Temporal primitives.
    • Implement long-running asynchronous Nexus Operations as Workflows.
    • Handle low-latency synchronous Nexus Operations with Temporal primitives or arbitrary code.
    • Execute Operations with at-least-once semantics by default, and exactly-once semantics using Workflow ID reuse policies.

  • Nexus Endpoints with a queue-based Worker architecture - Nexus Endpoints are a reverse proxy for Nexus Services.

    • Connect callers and handlers through Nexus Endpoints, for looser coupling.
    • Manage Endpoints in the Nexus Registry using the UI, CLI, or Cloud Ops API.
    • Use a Nexus Endpoint by name, which routes requests to an upstream target Namespace and Task Queue.
    • Handle Nexus requests in a Nexus Worker by polling an Endpoint's target Task Queue, with automatic load balancing.
    • Streamline operations by running Nexus Services in existing queue-based Workers.

  • Built-in Nexus Machinery - Execution guarantees are provided with built-in Nexus Machinery.

    • Execute Nexus Operations with reliable state-machine-based invocation and completion callbacks.
    • Guarantee atomic handoff from Workflow Event History to Nexus Operation state machines.
    • Ensure reliable execution with automatic retries, rate limiting, concurrency limiting, and circuit breaking.

  • Integrated observability - Execution debugging and observability is integrated into the Temporal Platform.

    • View Nexus Operation lifecycle and error info in Workflow Event History.
    • Debug across Namespaces with bi-directional linking.
    • Generate metrics, traces, and logs.

  • Improved blast radius isolation - Separate Namespaces isolate underlying Workers and sensitive Workflow state.

    • Limit direct access to a Namespace, while exposing Nexus Endpoints for others to use.
    • Isolate misbehaving Workers that affect rate limits for all Workers in a Namespace.
    • Avoid leaking Workflow implementation details to external callers.

  • Enhanced security and connectivity - Temporal Cloud provides integrated Nexus access controls and multi-region routing.

    • Connect Applications across Namespaces in an Account with Temporal's private mTLS-secured Envoy mesh.
    • Restrict which callers can use a Nexus Endpoint, with built-in Endpoint access controls.
    • Stream audit logs including Nexus Registry actions to create, update, or delete Endpoints.

Learn more​

To connect with the Nexus community, join the #nexus channel in Temporal Slack.

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