Midway - A Node.js framework for Serverless - Interview with Harry Chen

Serverless computing is one of those approaches that has taken the world by storm. The idea is to m…

Serverless computing is one of those approaches that has taken the world by storm. The idea is to make computing a flexible resource you consume on-demand. Compared to earlier models, it scales in terms of demand instead of requiring an upfront investment on in server infrastructure.

Harry Chen has developed a solution,  Midway, that makes it easier to develop serverless applications using Node.js. In this interview, we'll learn more about the approach and how it's affecting the technology landscape.

Can you tell a bit about yourself?

Hi, I'm  Harry Chen, a Staff Front-end Engineer of  Alibaba. I've worked on Node.js technology stack for a long time. During this time, I have provided framework and middleware solutions for  Taobao and other Alibaba business units.

I have been responsible for Serverless Arch standardization specification of Alibaba Group and overall Node.js system infrastructure for Taobao. During this time, I've solved various maintenance and stability issues for full-stack development. I am also responsible for Midway on-premise and open-source development.

The work includes the development and maintenance of community open source products, such as  Midway,  Sandbox,  Pandora.js,  Injection, and many others.

How would you describe Midway to someone who has never heard of it?

Midway is a framework that allows applications written in a pure function pattern to be deployed to various cloud platforms without any code modifications. The idea is to avoid lock-in on a single Function as a Service (FaaS) vendor.

Midway Serverless alleviates the pain of migrating traditional deployment pattern applications to elastic serverless platforms. At Alibaba Group, many legacy Node.js applications are still working online and require heavy operational maintenance. All of this can be costly.

serverless

Businesses need to understand serverless application with major pros and cons of serverless architecture, before deciding about serverless computing.

Bypass the complex middleware and consider a lightweight node.js implementation to deploy serverless functions from your mainframe CICS applications.

Happy Serverless September 2020! We at Coding Sans love working with serverless technology. This is why we decided to publish a report with the latest serverless trends this year. We partnered up with nine other companies who share our love to make it happen.

In this post, I will go through the process of predicting key performance characteristics and the cost of scale-per-request serverless platforms (like AWS Lambda, IBM Cloud Functions, Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Functions) with different workload intensities (in terms of requests per second) using a performance model.

Serverless computing promises greater scalability, faster development, more efficient deployment, and lower cost.