A platform to programmatically author and monitor workflows

Apache Airflow

Apache Airflow (or simply Airflow) is a platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows.

When workflows are defined as code, they become more maintainable, versionable, testable, and collaborative.

Use Airflow to author workflows as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) of tasks. The Airflow scheduler executes your tasks on an array of workers while following the specified dependencies. Rich command line utilities make performing complex surgeries on DAGs a snap. The rich user interface makes it easy to visualize pipelines running in production, monitor progress, and troubleshoot issues when needed.

Getting started

Please visit the Airflow Platform documentation (latest stable release) for help with installing Airflow, getting a quick start, or a more complete tutorial.

Documentation of GitHub master (latest development branch): ReadTheDocs Documentation

For further information, please visit the Airflow Wiki.

Beyond the Horizon

Airflow is not a data streaming solution. Tasks do not move data from
one to the other (though tasks can exchange metadata!). Airflow is not
in the Spark Streaming
or Storm space, it is more comparable to
Oozie or
Azkaban.

Workflows are expected to be mostly static or slowly changing. You can think
of the structure of the tasks in your workflow as slightly more dynamic
than a database structure would be. Airflow workflows are expected to look
similar from a run to the next, this allows for clarity around
unit of work and continuity.

Principles

Dynamic: Airflow pipelines are configuration as code (Python), allowing for dynamic pipeline generation. This allows for writing code that instantiates pipelines dynamically.
Extensible: Easily define your own operators, executors and extend the library so that it fits the level of abstraction that suits your environment.
Elegant: Airflow pipelines are lean and explicit. Parameterizing your scripts is built into the core of Airflow using the powerful Jinja templating engine.
Scalable: Airflow has a modular architecture and uses a message queue to orchestrate an arbitrary number of workers.