Serverless

In my Exploring WebAssembly outside the browser post, I talked about how WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) enables Wasm modules to run outside the browser and interact with the host in a limited set of use cases that Wasi supports (see Wasi proposals). In this blog post, let’s look into details of how to compile code to a Wasm+Wasi module and then run it in a Wasm runtime. Notice that I use Wasm+Wasi module deliberately (instead of just Wasm) because some languages have Wasm support and can run perfectly fine in the browser but they have no or limited Wasi support to run outside the browser. Read More →

Introduction WebAssembly (Wasm) was initially designed as a binary instruction format for executing native code efficiently within web browsers. The original use cases are focused on augmenting Javascript in the browser to run native code in a fast, portable, and secure way for games, 3D graphics, etc. However, its potential extends far beyond the browser. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the exciting realm of running Wasm outside the browser, exploring its advantages, and relevant specifications. Read More →

Workflows just released a new connector for Batch that greatly simplifies how to create and run Batch jobs from Workflows. Let’s take a look how you can use the new Batch connector of Workflows. Recap: Batch and Workflows Batch is a fully managed service to schedule, queue, and execute batch jobs on Google’s infrastructure. These batch jobs run on Compute Engine VM instances but they are managed by Batch service, so you don’t have to provision and manage VM instances yourself. Read More →

Cloud Tasks is a fully-managed service that manages the execution, dispatch, and asynchronous delivery of a large number of tasks to App Engine or any arbitrary HTTP endpoint. You can also use a Cloud Tasks queue to buffer requests between services for more robust intra-service communication. Cloud Tasks introduces two new features, the new queue-level routing configuration and BufferTask API. Together, they enable creating HTTP tasks and adding to a queue without needing the tasks client library. Read More →

If you use Workflows, you’ve been crafting your Workflows definitions in YAML (or JSON). You’re probably painfully aware of the limited support you get in your IDE with syntax validation or auto-completion with these YAML definitions. This was due to Workflow’s schema being out of date, as I covered in my previous post last year. I’m happy to report that our team recently updated the Workflows schema with the latest syntax. Read More →

Cloud Code is a set of IDE plugins for popular IDEs that make it easier to create, deploy and integrate applications with Google Cloud. Cloud Code provides an excellent extension mechanism through custom templates. In this post, I show you how you can create and use your own custom templates to add some features beyond those supported natively in Cloud Code, such as .NET functions, event triggered functions and more. As a recap, in my Introducing Cloud Functions support in Cloud Code post, I pointed out some limitations of the current Cloud Functions support in Cloud Code: Read More →

In a startup, you need to get to the MVP fast, gather feedback from early adopters, and iterate in a quick cycle. Anything that takes time away from developing and iterating on features delays the launch and that’s a serious problem when time-to-market is crucial. Google Cloud offers products that can help you to build and run your backend services on a fully managed serverless platform, saving time and freeing you from the burden of provisioning and managing infrastructure needed to run those services. Read More ↗︎

Cloud Code has been providing IDE support for the development cycle of Kubernetes and Cloud Run applications for a while now. I’m happy to report that the Dec 2022 version (1.21.0) of Cloud Code now supports Cloud Functions! In this first release of Cloud Functions support, you can: Use the Cloud Functions Explorer to view your project’s Cloud Functions properties and source code. Download your Cloud Functions to edit your code locally, then configure your local workspace to deploy those changes directly from Cloud Code. Read More →

This is a three-part series of posts, in which we summarize Workflows and service orchestration patterns. In this third and final post, we talk about managing workflow life cycles and the benefits of using Firestore with Workflows. If you’re not careful, the workflow definitions you create with YAML or JSON can get out of hand pretty quickly. While it is possible to use subworkflows to define snippets of a workflow that can be reused from multiple workflows, Workflows does not support importing these subworkflows. Read More ↗︎

This is part 2 of a three-part series of posts, in which we summarize Workflows and service orchestration patterns. You can apply these patterns to better take advantage of Workflows and service orchestration on Google Cloud. In the first post, we introduced some general tips and tricks, as well as patterns for event-driven orchestrations, parallel steps, and connectors. This second post covers more advanced patterns. Let’s dive in! Design for resiliency with retries and the saga pattern It’s easy to put together a workflow that chains a series of services, especially if you assume that those services will never fail. Read More ↗︎