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Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

aws.amazon.com

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Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#121

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

Herald_MJ wrote: post #83
Sephr wrote: post #41

Is anyone else slightly peeved by the popularity of this misnomer? If you are paying for servers , your app isn't serverless . Real serverless to me means decentralized p2p and offline apps. I also consider p2p-routed apps with centralized control serverless as long as they continue to function in a read-only state when the control server is down.

No, I'm not peeved by the "misnomer". What is getting a bit annoying is every conversation about serverless being dominated by snarky comments about there being no such thing. As software professionals, we all know there is a server involved in responding to requests for our applications. But 'serverless' does accurately describe services like AWS Lambda, because the experience of development is such that you don't r…

"Serverless" is definitely not an "accurate description of AWS Lambda", because the work is done by servers. As the parent mentioned, it would be a much more accurate description of P2P services/protocols.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#122

Post by davnicwil »

ranman wrote: post #112
davnicwil wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like DynamoDB but for SQL This would basically be the game-changer for building backends on lambda. The absolute key and most valuable piece in most backends is the persistent datastore. I absolutely want to build functional stateless business logic on lambda, but I absolutely will not, no matter the gain from not having to manage servers, have my database be dynamodb or any other non-RDBMS, for any serious applica…

Why not? Plenty of serious companies use DDB or MongoDb or plenty of other databases for their "serious applications"... this seems like a rule based on a bad experience. Would love to hear about it.

Why not? Well, a caveat: I will always use an RDBMS when the data is inherently relational. In a "serious application" (I realise the term serious is hyperbolic here and I shouldn't have used it) this is true most of the time.

If it weren't true, then of course I might consider using DynamoDB or similar. But I think these situations are few and far between.

I'm often wrong though and happy to learn about some counter examples if you have any / have my assumptions corrected.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#123

Post by TuringTest »

melvinram wrote: post #85
ShabbosGoy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

S3 is not serverless. Just because the implementation details (i.e. how servers are provisioned) are obscured from the end user doesn't make serverless. Web 3.0 is truly serverless because your application lives on a decentralized p2p cloud. Ethereum/Swarm(or IPFS)/Whisper is an example of a serverless p2p stack. You may as well call the service they're selling "managed", because that's what it is.

That's not how the term serverless is being used most places. See first comment I made. It's not being without server. It's about not thinking about the server.

That doesn't make the name any less stupid. It's exactly like calling automatic cars "gearless" because you don't need to manually change gears.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#124

Post by digger250 »

ranman wrote: post #98
kirillzubovsky wrote: post #23

In principle I really like this way of developing, and especially prototyping, but as it stands right now Google is doing a significantly better job with their tools than Amazon. Amazon got the same guts, but their presentation of these tools is horrendous. It's aimed at the highly skilled developers who would get the concepts in a blink, with the only problem that these are the same people who can spin out servers w…

> It's aimed at the highly skilled developers who would get the concepts in a blink, Do you have any advice on how we could make this stuff more accessible to new developers? When you say the presentation do you mean the overall marketing, the UX, or just the CSS?

I think AWS needs a good UX designer. I find that using AWS can be overwhelming at first. Here's a few suggestions:

1. Take "Amazon" out of every product name. Have a look at this list for example: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws_service_lim... This adds nothing but clutter to the page.

2. Stop calling everything "Simple". If it's simple, people will be able to tell for themselves. Calling things simple potentially makes people feel dumb if they have a problem with it.

3. The sheer number of offerings (over 18 groups with multiple items) on the "Services" tab of the AWS management console is overwhelming. I'd have a designer see if there was a better way of organizing things.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#125

Post by saiya-jin »

_vufv wrote: post #114
zdkl wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the experience of development is such that you don't really have to think about servers, along with all the complexity of provisioning, configuring and managing them. But didn't we get "The Cloud" to do that? I mean I'm fine with rebranding but this is a really fine line.

No. The Cloud is used to collectively represent all kinds different types of computing/storage/auxiliary services that can be managed on demand.

sounds a lot like bunch of servers somewhere out there, under watchful eye of 3-letter agencies

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#126

Post by mgkimsal »

marktangotango wrote: post #120
mgkimsal wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with many positions, there's a middle ground. I don't expect people to be able to dive in deep in to the innards of MSSQL and understand all the nuance between types of indexes and how different hardware choices can impact said index types. However, when working with "sr software engineers" who are responsible for SQL, I do expect someone to be able to set up a local test database and create some tables with sampl…

I've seen one team of devs in particular do a really nice job with their sql database, but more often than not dev teams trash their schema and databases, if they're using sql at all. They create rdbs that are not normalized, don't have foreign key constraints, too many indexes (index on every column to get this dashboard query to perform! I've seen this a sad number of times). Yeah sure sys admins and dbas aren't cr…

No doubt there's a potential for abuse, and there's middle grounds to be had. I've also caught hell from a PM for a project being 'late', even though I had 0 control over actually getting DB changes in, because the DBA was a) on vacation, then B) sick, then C) backed up on other work. But apparently, it was my team's fault that the project relying on a SQL database was not launched "on time" (a deadline I had no hand in making, nor did I agree to either).

The policy of "only DBA can make any changes to anything, and all schema changes have to be discussed, reviewed, vetted and approved by DBA" has benefits, in some situations, but also problems.

I had a DBA question why I needed pagination. "No one has ever asked for it before, and never needed it, and I think you're building your application wrong if you need that". After a few weeks of contentious meetings, we got hand-rolled stored procedures for each specific table/query, but they also took days to get to us.

But, hey, you know... at least the tables were normalized and we had "proper" indexes. We just took weeks to get done what should have taken a few hours to prototype (because, during the time we were building the tool, the team we were building it for ended up buying some third party service because we were taking so long).

We've all got war stories of incompetence on all sides (dba, dev, pm, whatever). This is why I advocate "middle ground". I trust a DBA who's actually done a bit of raw coding in their life. I trust a developer who understands the basics of SQL and DB workings (again, 'basics' are fine). I trust the estimates of a PM who is engaged with the team on a regular basis. I trust the views of a business analyst more if they actually show up to meetings and listen to the parties involved.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#128

Post by EGreg »

keithwhor wrote: post #12
EGreg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just silly. The internet was supposed to have no single point of failure. Now the Big Five have centralized everything. Why do you need to build centralized services on giant AWS server farms?

Unfortunately life and economics have no concern about the initial intent of anything, only the current utility. Systems, at scale, especially when run by biological processes (read: all man-made systems), have a tendency to centralize. Economies of scale dictate that this is just more efficient. We don't have to do anything. The "evolutionary reward" (i.e. your business thrives and moves quickly) of building on AWS…

Can't the same argument be made for statism, against anarchists and libertarians?

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#129

Post by rockostrich »

meow_mix wrote: post #127

I'm a little confused as to what the point of cognito is. Wouldn't users typically be managed by the application and data regarding the users typically be stored in the db? Why do we need another service for this?

In a microservice architecture, there's usually a users/authorization service. It makes it easier to have multiple services serve a single user pool. If you only have one public service then there's probably no point in having a separate service for users/authorization.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#130

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

etatoby wrote: post #88
melvinram wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called serverless because, for all intents and purposes, you don't know or control: * how many real or virtual servers are running your code. * how the servers were provisioned or setup. * how to access the servers (either via SSH or programmatically), either than through predefined APIs. * what happens when the servers break. * what causes the servers to disappear. * etc. The "server" concept has been abstracte…

We still run and manage our servers and save a metric ton of money wrt. "cloud" offerings. When "cloud" or "serverless" will be cheaper than managing your own dedicated servers, then it will actually be useful. Until then, it's just marketing.

In my experience a dedicated server will be cheaper most of the time. I'm using Hetzner for most of my customers (small & medium-size companies) and for several services offered by Amazon a dedicated solution is just cheaper. I always calculate the prices beforehand for several scenarios and self hosting scenarios are almost invariably cheaper (storage, computing etc.). This does NOT mean it's better. Hetzner's servers are in Europe, they're not infallible (but usually they replace the hardware within 30 minutes or so), you need more time for the initial setup than with AWS, and obviously you can't scale them up in the same way. However, they're cheaper.
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