Tutorial: Object as a Service (OaaS) Serverless Cloud Computing Paradigm

TL;DR

This paper introduces Object-as-a-Service (OaaS), a serverless cloud paradigm that encapsulates application logic, data, and non-functional requirements into a single package, simplifying cloud-native application development.

Contribution

It proposes the OaaS paradigm, inspired by object-oriented programming, and implements it through the open-source Oparaca platform to enhance cloud-native development.

Findings

OaaS streamlines cloud-native application development.

Oparaca platform demonstrates practical implementation of OaaS.

Tutorial provided for deploying applications on Oparaca.

Abstract

While the first generation of cloud computing systems mitigated the job of system administrators, the next generation of cloud computing systems is emerging to mitigate the burden for cloud developers -- facilitating the development of cloud-native applications. This paradigm shift is primarily happening by offering higher-level serverless abstractions, such as Function as a Service (FaaS). Although FaaS has successfully abstracted developers from the cloud resource management details, it falls short in abstracting the management of both data (i.e., state) and the non-functional aspects, such as Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. The lack of such abstractions implies developer intervention and is counterproductive to the objective of mitigating the burden of cloud-native application development. To further streamline cloud-native application development, we present Object-as-a-Service (OaaS) -- a serverless paradigm that borrows the object-oriented programming concepts to encapsulate application logic and data in addition to non-functional requirements into a single deployment package, thereby streamlining provider-agnostic cloud-native application development. We realized the OaaS paradigm through the development of an open-source platform called Oparaca. In this tutorial, we will present the concept and design of the OaaS paradigm and its implementation -- the Oparaca platform. Then, we give a tutorial on developing and deploying the application on the Oparaca platform and discuss its benefits and its optimal configurations to avoid potential overheads.