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olaph wagner edited this page Mar 6, 2019 · 8 revisions

Serverless reference architecture with IBM Cloud Functions (powered by Apache OpenWhisk)

IBM Cloud tile title and description / IBM Code title/subtitle

Respond to messages and handle streams Create autoscaling actions that respond to message streams.

IBM Developer description

Serverless platforms, like IBM Cloud Functions powered by Apache OpenWhisk, provide a runtime that scales up or down automatically in response to demand. This results in overall lower cloud resource consumption and a better match between business value gained and the cost of the resources that are used. One of the key use cases for Cloud Functions is to execute logic efficiently in response to events, such as messages or streams of data.

IBM Developer overview

This project shows how serverless, event-driven architectures execute code in response to messages or to handle streams of data records.

The application demonstrates two IBM Cloud Functions (based on Apache OpenWhisk) that read and write messages with IBM Message Hub (based on Apache Kafka). The use case demonstrates how actions work with data services and execute logic in response to message events.

One function, or action, is triggered by message streams of one or more data records. These records are piped to another action in a sequence (a way to link actions declaratively in a chain). The second action aggregates the message and posts a transformed summary message to another topic.

IBM Developer flow and diagram

IBM Developer components

  • IBM Cloud Functions
  • IBM Cloud Storage
  • IBM App ID
  • Cloudant

IBM Developer links

  • What makes serverless architectures so attractive? - Serverless architectures are one of the hottest trends in cloud computing this year, and for good reason. There are several technical capabilities and business factors coming together to make this approach very compelling from both an application development and deployment cost perspective.

  • Build a cloud-native app with Apache OpenWhisk - At this live coding event, Daniel Krook provides an overview of serverless architectures, introduces the OpenWhisk programming model, and then deploys an OpenWhisk application on IBM Bluemix, while you watch, step-by-step.

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