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Vol. I · No. 251
Mon · 8 Jun
A Daily Lexicon of Trustworthy Data
The Lexicon

005·75

orchestration

/ˌɔːr.kɪ.ˈstreɪ.ʃən/ - n.

1 [colloq.] The discipline of deciding which job runs first, now practiced by three tools that each believe they are in charge.Keep. Punchy.This is the problem.

Working definition

2. The coordinated scheduling and sequencing of pipeline tasks, including dependencies, retries, and execution order.

Promoted
Seen in the wild · 2
See also
  • dagAcyclic in the diagram. The on-call rotation reports a cycle.
  • data pipelineA sequence of steps that worked when one person built it and has been load-bearing ever since.
  • orchestrator sprawlThe state of having three tools to schedule jobs and a fourth, undocumented one to schedule the other three.
  • schedulerThe component that decides when work happens, currently outvoted by a cron entry no one will admit to writing.