Introduction
Serverless computing is becoming a very important aspect of application and software development, and for good reason. This technology has empowered small teams by allowing them to deploy enterprise level applications with almost no overhead. Over half of technology-related organizations stated that they are using some sort of serverless architecture. Developer-oriented serverless providers include AWS, Knative, and Easybase. There is no question that the cloud is the future. One of the most important features of many serverless computing architectures is the pricing model. The pricing model will revolve around usage such that you only pay for the resources that one uses. This allows for extremely low-cost testing/development phases without having to change backend processes. Let’s take a look at 3 features of serverless app and project development that programmers are adopting in their workflows.
1. User Authentication
A common situation that developers find themselves in is one in which they need to be able to manage users. This can often be difficult to manually implement when it comes to security and integrity. This includes the workflow for signing in, signing up, and managing attributes and user-related data. Two services that handle this process are AWS Cognito, and Easybase React for example. These providers will manage a project’s user base. The most important aspect of these providers is how they handle security and privacy. Their packages will take care of session tokens, asymmetric keys, and user integrity. The overhead of implementing these features for an individual project can often be quite high, so many teams have moved to serverless.
2. Live Analytics
One of the most beloved features of cloud infrastructure is how they automatically manage logging and usage analytics in real time. This allows developers and programmers to focus on their project and workflows rather than administrative tasks such as analytics tracking. Also, project managers can view the project’s current traffic and cost visually, rather than a more rudimentary, traditional solution.
Furthermore, detailed analytics allows software development teams to observe the efficiency of their applications and the effect of workflow changes. Plus, attributes that are affecting usage cost are readily available.
3. Cloud Database
Cloud databases were one of the first features of serverless computing that developers migrated to last decade. This is because they can be scaled and deployed rapidly. When it comes to resources (storage, latency, etc.) you can get what you need when you need it. If your project experiences a surge of traffic, the serverless backend will be there to pick up the pace. In a more general sense, cloud databases integrate well with other serverless modules. For example, using Easybase’s serverless React and React Native suite allows authenticated users to get specific permissions on a given data table. A common use case would be users only having permissions to view/edit records that they correspond to. Correspondence can be assigned visually in the data table or by default when a user posts a new record. One large table can handle all your applications users’ private data with this workflow. When a user signs in they can/will only retrieve records that are “theirs”.
Conclusion
The cost benefits and ease-of-use of serverless computing architecture is attractive to many software developers, especially when it comes to application development. Smaller teams and individual developers can benefit greatly with the rise of this new technology. Enterprise performance modules can be deployed with a couple clicks. Production-ready applications and projects can be deployed faster than ever. For example, React and React Native are javascript libraries capable of using this technology, and they are very popular for that. Open source implementations of serverless libraries can be seen on Github and elsewhere. If you are interested in these technologies, there has never been a better time to get into application development. Be creative and and start coding, cloud backend services are here to help
