What does a serverless application mean?

Serverless applications still run on normal servers, but control over the server's behavior and the stack are completely handled by the cloud provider—all that's required from the developer is to write a function that describes the business logic. This function can be set to trigger on a request to a certain API endpoint, on a certain event (for example, a file addition to the S3 bucket), or on a scheduler so that it runs every day.

What are the limitations of the serverless approach?

Serverless applications are mainly bound by the memory they can use and, therefore, the packages that can be installed. For AWS Lambda, the limit is 50 MB.

What are the benefits of serverless APIs?

Serverless APIs have quite a few benefits. First and foremost, you don't need to spend time on the development and maintenance of servers, load balancers, and so on. Serverless APIs are generally paid for each execution, which means that multiple APIs can sit for free, without you paying for a running instance. At the same time, they are scalable – if needed, a vendor will just spawn more machines to work on all the requests!

What role does Chalice play in the development of a serverless application?

Chalice is a Python package for Lambda functions, developed by Amazon. It provides invaluable help with Lambda function development—it handles packaging the code, testing it locally, and uploading it to the server. In other words, it helps with the whole life cycle.