Serverless Computing

Serverless Computing refers to a form of cloud-based utility computing where pricing is structured based on the exact resources used by a single or series of applications as opposed to a pricing structure where the entire system needs to be purchased prior to executing the application. This form of computing was introduced to the public at large by Amazon Web Services in 2014 through this Lambda product offering. \cite{services} Key advantages of serverless computing include cost and scalability.  The setup costs typically associated with enterprise applications is eliminated in a serverless paradigm as hardware is pre-provisioned by the cloud computing provider. This significantly reduces the lifecycle of deploying enterprise grade software and reduces the resultant maintenance debt as thereby reducing overall system complexity. Furthermore, serverless applications are designed to elastically scale to meet incoming demand. Every initialization of a serverless application spawns a separate serverless instances and these instances can scale across the provider's hardware offering ensuring optimal allocation of system resources. A limitation of serverless computing is that they are best used for single purpose computing i.e. performing a small set of distinct tasks such as counting, simple arithmetic, read or write operations.

General Transit Feed Specification

General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) is a transit-specific data specification that allows public transit agencies to publish their transit data in a format usable by a wide array of software applications. It is used across the world by many of public transport providers. The GTFS protocol was initially developed in 2005 as a result of a collaboration between Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation (Trimet), the Portland metro area public transit provider, and a  Google employed engineer. \cite{mchugh2013}