FlowBuilder and Flow are the primary interfaces for constructing and running Bionic flows. Either of them can be used to represent the collection of interdependent entities that make up a single analysis. The difference is that a FlowBuilder is a mutable object which can be updated, while a Flow is an immutable object which can perform computation.
The typical pattern is to start with an empty FlowBuilder, incrementally add entity definitions to it, then use FlowBuilder.build() to generate a Flow. This Flow can be used immediately to compute entity values, or passed to other code, which might reconfigure or extend it.
Although Flow objects are immutable, there is a mechanism for modifying them: instead of a method like set that mutates the Flow, there is a setting method that returns a new copy with the requested change. This allows Flows to be easily customized without worrying about shared state. However, this API can only be used to update existing entities; if you want to define new entities, you'll need to convert the Flow back to a FlowBuilder using to_builder.
See the Concepts documentation for more details.
bionic.FlowBuilder
bionic.flow.FlowCase
bionic.Flow
bionic.cache_api.Cache
bionic.cache_api.CacheEntry