No More, No Less - A Formal Model for Serverless Computing

Maurizio Gabbrielli, Saverio Giallorenzo, Ivan Lanese, Fabrizio Montesi, Marco Peressotti, Stefano Pio Zingaro [2019].
In proceedings of COORDINATION 2019, pp. 148-157.

Abstract

Serverless computing, also known as Functions-as-a-Service, is a recent paradigm aimed at simplifying the programming of cloud applications. The idea is that developers design applications in terms of functions, which are then deployed on a cloud infrastructure. The infrastructure takes care of executing the functions whenever requested by remote clients, dealing automatically with distribution and scaling with respect to inbound traffic.

While vendors already support a variety of programming languages for serverless computing (e.g. Go, Java, Javascript, Python), as far as we know there is no reference model yet to formally reason on this paradigm. In this paper, we propose the first core formal programming model for serverless computing, which combines ideas from both the λ-calculus (for functions) and the π-calculus (for communication). To illustrate our proposal, we model a real-world serverless system. Thanks to our model, we capture limitations of current vendors and formalise possible amendments.

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@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/coordination/GabbrielliGLMPZ19,
  author       = {Maurizio Gabbrielli and
                  Saverio Giallorenzo and
                  Ivan Lanese and
                  Fabrizio Montesi and
                  Marco Peressotti and
                  Stefano Pio Zingaro},
  editor       = {Hanne Riis Nielson and
                  Emilio Tuosto},
  title        = {No More, No Less - {A} Formal Model for Serverless Computing},
  booktitle    = {Coordination Models and Languages - 21st {IFIP} {WG} 6.1 International
                  Conference, {COORDINATION} 2019, Held as Part of the 14th International
                  Federated Conference on Distributed Computing Techniques, DisCoTec
                  2019, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark, June 17-21, 2019, Proceedings},
  series       = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
  volume       = {11533},
  pages        = {148--157},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  year         = {2019},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22397-7\_9},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-030-22397-7\_9},
  timestamp    = {Sun, 19 Jan 2025 13:15:30 +0100},
  biburl       = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/coordination/GabbrielliGLMPZ19.bib},
  bibsource    = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}

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