In one embodiment, the invention is a method and apparatus for failure recovery for stream processing applications. One embodiment of a method for providing a failure recovery mechanism for a stream processing application includes receiving source code for the stream processing application, wherein the source code defines a fault tolerance policy for each of the components of the stream processing application, and wherein respective fault tolerance policies defined for at least two of the plurality of components are different, generating a sequence of instructions for converting the state(s) of the component(s) into a checkpoint file comprising a sequence of storable bits on a periodic basis, according to a frequency defined in the fault tolerance policy, initiating execution of the stream processing application, and storing the checkpoint file, during execution of the stream processing application, at a location that is accessible after failure recovery.