Tim Spann describes one of the more powerful features of Apache NiFi:
Sometimes, you need to backup your current running flow, let that flow run at a later date, or make a backup of what is in-process now. You want this in a permanent storage and want to reconstitute it later like orange juice and add it back into the flow or restart it.
This could be due to failures, for integration testing, for testing new versions of components, as a checkpoint, or for many other purposes. You don’t always want to reprocess the original source or files (they may be gone).
Read on for an explanation of how FlowFile streams can do this.