A function is a body of code that resides on a server and that an application can invoke from a client or from another server without the need to send the function code itself. The caller can direct a data-dependent function to operate on a particular dataset, or can direct a data-independent function to operate on a particular server, member, or member group.
The function execution service provides solutions for a variety of use cases, including:
- An application needs to perform an operation on the data associated with a key. A registered server-side function can retrieve the data, operate on it, and put it back, with all processing performed locally to the server.
- An application needs to initialize some of its components once on each server, which might be used later by executed functions.
- A third-party service, such as a messaging service, requires initialization and startup.
- Any arbitrary aggregation operation requires iteration over local data sets that can be done more efficiently through a single call to the cache server.
- An external resource needs provisioning that can be done by executing a function on a server.
Check the following sections for more information:
