Introducing Restate: A Fast and Lightweight Distributed Application Development Platform
Introduction
Restate is a new startup founded by Stephan Ewen, one of the co-creators of Apache Flink, a popular stream-processing framework. The company aims to simplify distributed application development with its innovative approach.
Funding and Launch
Restate recently raised a $7 million seed funding round and launched version 1.0 of its open BSL-licensed version. The company also introduced its managed cloud service.
What is Restate?
Restate is designed to be fast and lightweight, allowing developers to handle workflows efficiently without the traditional resource-intensive approaches. The platform offers a durable execution engine that enables fault-tolerant communication between services and integrates seamlessly with function-as-a-service platforms like AWS Lambda and Cloudflare Workers.
Key Features
- Fast and lightweight platform
- Durable execution engine
- Integrates with function-as-a-service platforms
Comparison with Temporal
While Temporal offers similar features, Restate emphasizes its speed and lightweight nature, making it stand out in the market.
Solving a Problem
After observing users abusing Flink for transactional orchestration-style use cases, the team at Restate was inspired to create a more elegant solution. The platform addresses the need for reliable communication between services in modern applications.
The Core Concept
Restate combines stream-based processing ideas from Flink with workflows-as-code concept and a specialized event log. The platform focuses on durable execution, virtual objects, and durable promises, providing a foundation for event-driven programming.
Engine Performance
The engine powering Restate is small, lightweight, and fast, packaged as a single binary for ease of use. This feature makes it suitable for various use cases, including e-commerce shopping carts, where traditional workflow engines might be too cumbersome.
Hosted Restate Cloud
Restate also launched its hosted Restate Cloud in early access, offering the service for free while gathering feedback to shape its monetization strategy.
Funding and Support
The funding round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Essence VC, firstminute capital, and industry experts like Datadog founder Oli Pomel, and Apache Kafka founders Jay Kreps and Neha Narkhede.
Future Plans
Restate plans to expand its offerings by supporting more languages in its SDK and enhancing its infrastructure to cater to a broader audience.
Endorsement
Jay Kreps, one of the Apache Kafka founders, praised Restate's approach to distributed transactional applications as a significant step towards ensuring correctness, resilience, and scalability.
In conclusion, Restate is poised to revolutionize distributed application development with its fast, lightweight, and innovative platform.
