How would you meet, in AWS, a need that Durable Objects were used for?
Answer out loud or in your head first, then compare.
Answer
First I establish the need, rather than looking for a service with an identical name. For an atomic counter, a conditional update in a database may be enough. For the order of events of one entity, e.g. a campaign, SQS FIFO may be useful. A longer, multi-stage process needs separate state storage and execution control.
A Durable Object combines code, the object's identity and its durable data. In AWS these roles may be split. So I won't say “SQS replaces Durable Objects” for every use. I'll check what must be indivisible, what must survive a restart and what it costs to go through one owner of the state.
Why it matters: Shows transfer of knowledge without pretending the platforms are equivalent.
Possible follow-ups: Why doesn't an ordered queue alone replace a database transaction?
How did it go? Be honest — “Not yet” puts the question on your review list.
Start with
- E-P01 · What is cloud computing? — AWS, Cloudflare and infrastructure
- E-P03 · What is Cloudflare, and what is it for? — AWS, Cloudflare and infrastructure
- E-P04 · How does Cloudflare differ from AWS? — AWS, Cloudflare and infrastructure
Further reading
- Cloudflare: Rules of Durable Objects(opens in a new tab)Page updated 18.10.2026. Per-entity coordination, storage, and care with interleaving around async I/O.
- PostgreSQL: Transaction Isolation(opens in a new tab)Docs; accessed 22.10.2026. Isolation, locks and serialization anomalies; a good basis for working with an ORM.