Quantitative Analysis of Cloud Function Evolution in the AWS Serverless Application Repository

Abstract: The serverless computing ecosystem is growing due to interest by software engineers. Beside Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) and Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) systems, developer-oriented tools such as deployment and debugging frameworks as well as cloud function repositories enable the rapid creation of wholly or partially serverless applications. This study presents first insights into how cloud functions (Lambda functions) and composite serverless applications offered through the AWS Serverless Application Repository have evolved over the course of one year. Specifically, it outlines information on cloud function and function-based application offering models and descriptions, high-level implementation statistics, and evolution including change patterns over time. Several results are presented in live paper style, offering hyperlinks to continuously updated figures to follow the evolution after publication date.