How ComputeSphere maps these: static site, web service, background worker, cron job

The four types, one line each

• Static site: files only once built. Built from a Git repository and served from ComputeSphere's edge (servers close to your visitors that hand out files), with no spherelet running.
• Web service: anything that answers HTTP requests, such as a server-rendered app or an API. It gets a public HTTPS URL.
• Background worker: slow work kept away from requests, such as sending emails or resizing uploads. It runs all the time and has no URL.
• Cron job: work at set times, such as a nightly report. It runs, then exits.

A spherelet is one running copy of a service, as in lesson 1.2.1; Path 5 covers them in depth.

From shape to services

• Static site shape: one static site.
• Server-rendered app: one web service.
• Single-page app and an API: a static site for the app's built files, and a web service for the API, which the app calls at its public URL.

Some teams serve a single-page app's files from the API's web service instead. That's one fewer service, but a spherelet serves every file, not the edge.

Whichever shape you pick, slow work and scheduled work don't belong inside a request. They become services of their own, beside the web service: a background worker for work handed off from a request, a cron job for work that runs on a clock.

One product, four parts

A shop at example.com might have:

• marketing pages at example.com: a static site;
• the store at shop.example.com, which renders pages from the database: a web service;
• order confirmation emails, sent after checkout: a background worker;
• a sales summary every morning at 6: a cron job.

The database isn't on the list. ComputeSphere doesn't run databases: yours is hosted elsewhere, and your services connect to it.

Ports, health checks and schedules are in lesson 5.2.2, Service types, when you come to deploy.