Transactions and Serverless are Made for Each Other

At the SF Systems Meetup on November 20, 2024, a presentation on DBOS, based on a recent CACM paper, addressed the challenge of implementing serverless architectures for stateful applications. Traditional serverless platforms excel in scalability and simplicity but cater mainly to stateless applications, whereas modern applications often require state management. DBOS proposes a solution by storing workflow execution states in a database, allowing for seamless recovery and scalability, and effectively combining the benefits of traditional stateful systems with the scalability of serverless platforms. The presentation also covered DBOS's use of Postgres-compatible databases for state storage, lightweight durable execution, handling of code changes during workflows, and support for features like time travel debugging.