# Formalizing Event-Driven Behavior of Serverless Applications

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.03584 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.03584/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 8 Dec 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Functionals in the Clouds: An abstract architecture of serverless Cloud-Native Apps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10362/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present new operational semantics for serverless computing that model the event-driven relationships between serverless functions, as well as their interaction with platforms services such as databases and object stores. These semantics precisely encapsulate how control transfers between functions, both directly and through reads and writes to platform services. We use these semantics to define the notion of the service call graph for serverless applications that captures program flows through functions and services. Finally, we construct service call graphs for twelve serverless JavaScript applications, using a prototype of our call graph construction algorithm, and we evaluate their accuracy.