Serverless computing and cloud function-based applications

Abstract

Serverless computing is a growing industry trend with corresponding rise in interest by scholars and tinkerers. Increasingly, open source and academic system prototypes are being proposed especially in relation with cloud, edge and fog computing among other distributed computing specialisations. Due to the strict separation between elastically scalable stateless microservices bound to stateful backend services prevalent in this computing paradigm, the resulting applications are inherently distributed with favourable characteristics such as elastic scalability and disposability. Still, software application developers are confronted with a multitude of different methods and tools to build, test and deploy their function-based applications in today’s serverless ecosystems. The logical next step is therefore a methodical development approach with key enablers based on a classification of languages, tools, systems, system behaviours, patterns, pitfalls, application architectures, compositions and cloud services around the serverless application development process.