Wang, KanMa, JingLai, Edmund M-K2024-08-142024-08-142024-08-07IEEE Access, ISSN: 2169-3536 (Print); 2169-3536 (Online), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), PP(99), 1-1. doi: 10.1109/access.2024.34396952169-35362169-3536http://hdl.handle.net/10292/17883Serverless computing allows developers to create workflows for complex tasks through the composition of serverless functions. Current serverless workflow engines rely on master-side pattern which do not permit direct interaction between consecutive serverless functions in the workflow. In this paper, a decentralized worker-side pattern is proposed that provides better performance by allowing consecutive functions to flow from the current node to the next without first having to interact with the master controller. It treats the serverless workflow as a whole unit and uses a locality strategy to optimize performance. This approach is implemented in a workflow engine called BriskChain to demonstrate its effectiveness. Experiments using both synthetic and real application workflows show that BriskChain requires significantly reduced runtime overhead compared with OpenWhisk and Apache Composer, two open-source serverless platforms.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/4606 Distributed Computing and Systems Software46 Information and Computing Sciences08 Information and Computing Sciences09 Engineering10 Technology40 Engineering46 Information and computing sciencesJournal ArticleOpenAccess10.1109/access.2024.3439695