An Event-B Formal Model for Access Control and Resource Management of Serverless Apps

Cloud computing technologies help developers build scalable distributed apps. Serverless architecture, or Function as a Service (FaaS), which separates app businesses into multiple functions, is one of the cloud-native architectures that has gained popularity. Those functions can be developed and deployed independently without provisioning infrastructure. Despite the considerable advantages and increasing popularity of cloud-native apps, developers face many challenges when building their cloud-native applications. To ensure the robustness and security of cloud-native apps and protect crucial resources, the design and implementation of functions and associated access control systems play a pivotal role. In this paper, we have employed formal methods and tools to develop a set of patterns to help cloud-native application developers to design robust serverless apps. We have used Event-B and its associated toolset, Rodin, to construct these formal patterns and demonstrated how these patterns can be used in practical case studies.