Why a serverless guide?
Revised: 2023-10-08
Building solutions with Amazon Web Services (AWS) can be daunting!
There are over two hundred Amazon Web Services. Each service has at least one developer guide with hundreds of pages. Services also have API references, tutorials, workshops, and dozens of related articles and videos.
Detailed and comprehensive documentation is invaluable. But, when you consider a typical solution is built with six or more services, the volume of information can be overwhelming.
The goal of this serverless developer guide is to give you directed learning paths for the core services needed to build serverless solutions.
In serverless solutions, you focus on writing code that serves your customers, without managing servers. Serverless technologies are pay-as-you-go, can scale both up and down, and are easy to expand across geographic regions.
Meeting you where you are now
We expect that you are a developer with traditional web application development experience, but you are new to Amazon Web Services or serverless architectures. We also assume you want to get beyond a trivial hello world example. So, as we say at AWS, we will dive deeper into patterns used by thousands of customers in production.
This guide will highlight what you need to know right away and link to service documentation for advanced topics and details.
For example, you'll learn that the Lambda service spins up environments to run compute functions, but to manage function scaling or reduce startup time, we'll link you to relevant sections of the Lambda developer guide.
Organization of this Guide
To avoid information overload, the scope of this guide is limited to essential serverless concepts and services to help you get started quickly.
1 - Serverless Fundamentals
The guide starts with prerequisites to understand and use AWS, such as account creation and an overview of Amazon cloud infrastructure (regions, ARNs, security model). Then, it will introduce the mindset shift you need to start your serverless journey. Next, it will dive into event-driven architecture and concepts helpful to transition to serverless.
Along the way, this guide will introduce core services and additional articles, workshops, and tutorials, you can choose to reinforce your learning with hands-on activities.
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AWS Identity and Access Management for service security
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AWS Lambda for compute functions
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Amazon API Gateway for integrating HTTP/S requests with services to handle the requests
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Amazon DynamoDB for data storage and retrieval
Expected outcomes: You will understand how services combine, and you’ll create a microservice to retrieve data.
2 - Service Starters
Core service starters will quickly explain the value and technical fundamentals of each service. Each starter will also mention advanced topics, so you can start with the essentials, but be aware of capabilities to dive into when you need them.
Starters are short reads (less than 2,300 words; 10-15 min) that connect concepts and practical hands-on use.
3 - Serverless Experiences
There are many hands-on options to learn serverless. Choosing your path can be difficult.
Learn serverless techniques in an online workshop
Learn by doing in the Serverless Patterns Workshop
