Temporal is a durable workflow orchestration platform used at scale. These exercises cover Temporal's key concepts: signals for async communication, queries for state inspection, child workflows, durable scheduling, and safe workflow versioning.
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At standup, a colleague asks what Signals are in Temporal. What is the correct answer?
Signals in Temporal are asynchronous messages delivered to a running workflow. You define signal handlers with wf.setHandler(mySignal, handler), and external code sends them via the Temporal client. Signals can update workflow state, add items to a queue, or unblock a wf.condition() that the workflow is waiting on. Unlike queries, signals are durable and trigger state changes — they do not return values.
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During a PR review, a teammate asks what Queries in Temporal are and how they differ from Signals. Which answer is correct?
Queries are synchronous, read-only operations. You register a query handler with wf.setHandler(myQuery, () => currentState) and call it externally via the Temporal client. The caller receives the current state value immediately. Crucially, query handlers must not modify workflow state — they are pure reads. This contrasts with Signals, which are asynchronous and can trigger state changes.
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In a design review, the team discusses child workflows in Temporal. A junior engineer asks when to use a child workflow instead of an Activity. What is correct?
Child workflows are appropriate for units of work that need their own independent history, signal handlers, or that represent a significant sub-process with multiple steps. They appear as separate workflows in the Temporal UI and can be cancelled or signalled independently. Activities are better for single, atomic operations — an API call, a file upload, a database write — that don't need their own workflow history or the ability to receive signals.
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An incident report shows a deployed workflow breaking after a code change that altered the sequence of awaited calls. A senior engineer asks what workflow versioning is for. What is correct?
Temporal replays workflow history by re-executing workflow code — so the code must produce the same sequence of commands (determinism). If you change the order of awaited calls, running workflows will fail replay with a non-determinism error. Workflow versioning (wf.patched('my-change-id')) lets you branch: old runs take the old code path, new runs take the new path. This allows safe rollout of breaking changes to workflow logic.
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During a code review, a senior engineer asks what Schedules in Temporal provide that a simple cron job does not. What is accurate?
Temporal Schedules go far beyond cron. They offer configurable overlap policies (skip a run if previous is still going, buffer it, or terminate the previous), backfill for missed intervals, jitter to spread load, and the ability to pause/resume without code changes. All scheduled runs are visible in the Temporal UI with full history. A system cron has none of this observability or control and offers no durability guarantees.
What does the "Temporal Workflow Signals Vocabulary" vocabulary exercise cover?
This exercise tests real IT vocabulary related to temporal workflow signals vocabulary through 5 multiple-choice questions, each built from realistic workplace sentences rather than abstract definitions.
Is this vocabulary exercise free to use?
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How many questions does this exercise have?
This exercise has 5 questions. Each one shows a real-world sentence or scenario with multiple-choice options and an explanation once you answer.
What happens after I answer a question?
You'll see immediate feedback showing whether your answer was correct, along with a short explanation of why — then a button to move to the next question, and a full results screen at the end.
Can I retry the exercise if I get questions wrong?
Yes. Once you reach the results screen, click "Try again" to reset your answers and go through the exercise from the start as many times as you like.
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No — progress within an exercise resets if you navigate away or reload. Each exercise is short enough to complete in a few minutes in one sitting.
Are these vocabulary exercises connected to other topics?
Yes — browse the full vocabulary exercises hub to find related modules covering adjacent IT topics and roles.
How is this different from reading a glossary or blog article?
Exercises like this one are active recall drills — you have to choose the correct term or phrasing yourself, which builds retention faster than passively reading a definition.
Where can I find more vocabulary exercises?
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