An alternative approach for user facing apps is to connect directly to the database from the browser. Lambda still has a role to play in such an architecture, but hopefully most of your basic crud operations can go direct, with less commonly called functions like login depending on Lambda. I address this option about 2/3 of the way through this webcast on serverless best practices https://blog.fauna.com/webcast-video-serverless-best-practic...
Thanks. :) That was the last thing I wrote before falling asleep... TLDR is that many (not just FaunaDB) cloud databases have a security and connection model that's suitable for connecting from the browser. I know Firebase has been doing it forever, and you can also do it with DynamoDB if you don't mind complexity.
It takes a little bit of thinking to set up the security rules so that users can only see what they are allowed, but it's worth it for the performance and runtime simplicity. And of course you can always invoke a Lambda for code paths that need to run with privileged access.
