An Overview of Google's Recently Alpha-tested Cloud Functions Feature

Google is working on testing a Cloud Functions feature that automatically triggers other events as soon as there is a change in Cloud service. If this feature goes successfully, developers will find it easier to create richer services. Google's Cloud Functions is lightweight, synchronous, event-based feature that enables developers build single-purpose functions responding to Cloud events. Most importantly, there would be no need to deploy efforts for managing a server or runtime environment while using this feature, something that will definitely save time & resources.  

Understanding Cloud Events & Functions from Developer's Perspective...

A developer's Cloud environment witnesses a range of activities, which are normally referred as Cloud events. A Cloud event may be anything ranging from modifying data in a database, addition of new files to a storage system, or simply creation of a new virtual machine instance. Triggers serve as the starting point for creating a specific response to a specific event. By definition, the basic mechanisms for responding to a specific event are referred as Cloud Functions.

Written in JavaScript, Cloud Functions are executed in a fully managed Node.js environment that's available on Google Cloud Platform. Cloud Functions can be triggered asynchronously from Google Cloud Pub/Sub and Google Cloud Storage. Such events can even use HTTP invocation for the purpose of synchronous execution.

By alpha testing this promising Cloud events feature, Google seems to give developers something equally beneficial as Amazon's Lambda is providing. Lambda is made available by Amazon to automate such tasks for developers and allow them quickly create richer services. Now, with this feature, it’s fairly evident that Google has also implemented its plan on the same lines.

What Google Says on its New Cloud Function Feature?

The current release being an Alpha release of Google Cloud Functions, Google recommends not deploying it for production purpose. Google also makes it very clear that backward-incompatible ways may be adopted for making any changes, if required, to this new feature. Also, accessing the feature would require Google's permission and so developers will have to request for the same from Google.