Functions-as-a-service allow developers to run their code in a “serverless” environment. A developer can provide a function to a cloud provider and the code for that function will be scheduled onto a container and executed whenever an event triggers that function.

An “event” can mean many different things. It is a signal that something has changed within your application. When you save a file to an Amazon S3 bucket, that creates an event. When a user signs up for your app, that can create an event.

Functions-as-a-service are allowing people to build applications completely out of managed cloud infrastructure. Apps can be fully “serverless”, with managed databases, queueing systems, and APIs tied together by event-triggered functions.

Today, there is not a consistent format for events across different applications and cloud providers. This makes it more difficult to stitch together events across these different environments. Ideally, events would be lightweight, easy to deserialize, and easy to interoperate with.

The Cloud Events specification is a project within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation with the goal of creating a standard format for events. Doug Davis is the CTO for developer advocacy of containers at IBM. He joins the show to discuss how events and event-based programming works, and the need for a common format across cloud events.

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