Schedule based execution with extensible continuation based actions

Abstract

Generally in a computing environment, executing work based on time (i.e. according to a predetermined schedule) is a common need. However, in cloud based systems, scheduled work may be expensive to customers as generally customers rent system resources. Thus, having a processor dedicated to performing actions that have been pre-scheduled can be expensive. This application describes using a continuation-based runtime for scheduling time-bound and/or periodic work in a distributed (i.e. cloud) system. A system architecture and computer-implemented method are described that deploy an environment-independent action to a remote-based system (such as a cloud computing system, for example). The action is limited to using a predetermined amount of resources and is limited to simple, non-cpu intensive orchestrations of network calls. A schedule is defined for the action, and the action is then called in a processor-independent fashion (for example, by using a continuation based runtime) such that state of the action is maintained independent of the processor on which the action is being executed.