# Functionals in the Clouds: An abstract architecture of serverless Cloud-Native Apps

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10362 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10362/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 May 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [The server is dead, long live the server: Rise of Serverless Computing, Overview of Current State and Future Trends in Research and Industry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02888/) (2019)
- [Formal Foundations of Serverless Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.05870/) (2019)
- [Serverless Applications: Why, When, and How?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.08173/) (2020)
- [Triggerflow: Trigger-based Orchestration of Serverless Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08654/) (2020)
- [Functionals and hardware](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1501.03043/) (2015)
- [Formalizing Event-Driven Behavior of Serverless Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.03584/) (2019)
- [Serverless Predictions: 2021-2030](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03075/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Cloud Native Application CNApp (as a distributed system) is a collection of independent components (micro-services) interacting via communication protocols. This gives rise to present an abstract architecture of CNApp as dynamically re-configurable acyclic directed multi graph where vertices are microservices, and edges are the protocols. Generic mechanisms for such reconfigurations evidently correspond to higher-level functions (functionals). This implies also internal abstract architecture of microservice as a collection of event-triggered serverless functions (including functions implementing the protocols) that are composed into event-dependent data-flow graphs, and dynamically reconfigured at the runtime. Again, generic mechanisms for such compositions and reconfigurations correspond to functionals and higher order type theory like Coq https://coq.inria.fr/about-coq. Our contribution is strictly theoretical and relies on the abstract architecture of CNApp that is closely related to the calculus of functionals and relations. The proposed theoretical approach is an attempt to implement the original idea of programming at the function level postulated by John Backus 1978 citeBackus; the idea that is still waiting to be implemented as a non-von Neumann programming language.