What is Temporal?
Temporal is a developer first, open source platform designed to make your application code durable and resilient to failures.
The most valuable mission critical workloads in any software are long running and tie together multiple services. With Temporal, your application will run reliably even if it encounters problems, such as network outages or server crashes, which would be catastrophic for a typical application.
Temporal allows you to develop your applications as if failures don’t exist. Instead of writing complex error-handling code and application code to detect and recover from failures, you can focus entirely on your business logic. Temporal takes care of the heavy lifting, guaranteeing that your workflows are executed to completion - whether they run for seconds, days, or even years.
Build Resilient Applications at Scale: Durable Execution
At the heart of Temporal is the concept of Durable Execution. It is the guarantee that, once started, your application will run to completion despite adverse conditions (such as a crash or hardware failure) that would otherwise cause it to fail. Durable Execution makes your applications invincible and allows your applications to be resilient and durable by default.
This durability is achieved through Event History which keeps a record of each step in a Workflow Execution. If something goes wrong, the Workflow can resume exactly where it left off at its last recorded event, without losing any progress. This durability makes your applications reliable and resilient, allowing you to execute code exactly once and to completion, regardless of how long it takes.
Ready to build your first invincible application? Join a global community of developers embracing reliability and scalability by default. Whether you self-host Temporal to harness the power of open source or leverage Temporal Cloud for hassle-free scalability and management, you can build applications with unmatched reliability.
What is a Temporal Application?
💡 To learn more about the basics, check out the Understanding Temporal page.
A Temporal Application is made up of lightweight Workflow Executions. These executions can run concurrently, manage their state independently, and scale from millions to billions and all while consuming minimal resources. Even if a Workflow Execution pauses, it doesn’t use compute resources until it resumes. Each Workflow Execution runs exactly once, to completion, no matter how long it takes or what failures occur.
What is the Temporal Platform?
The Temporal Platform is the foundation behind durable and scalable Workflow Executions. It combines the Temporal Service, which supervises and manages Workflow Executions, and Worker Processes, which run your Workflow and Activity code with one of the Temporal SDKs. With options to self-host or use Temporal Cloud, the platform ensures your applications are resilient, no matter the scale or complexity.