Training

So you've built and deployed a Phoenix application backed by Ecto and Postgres, and come to the conclusion that you love it. If you are looking at progressing to the next level, this hands on training will help you get to the next level. In it, we will focus on building applications using OTP behaviours and architecture guidelines. Learn about the battle-tested abstractions needed to build back-end, fault tolerant systems that will run for years and scale to billions of users.

AUDIENCE

People who have built a Phoenix Application and would like to know the underlying OTP behaviours.

PREREQUISITES

This is an intermediate level class scheduled to get you up and running with OTP. You should have basic knowledge of Elixir, and whilst not necessary, it would be useful if you have developed a Phoenix application.

OBJECTIVES

When you've completed this class, you'll have a deeper understanding of how to architect back-end systems and micro-services that you can access and use from Phoenix. Learn why we need behaviours such as Generic Servers, Generic Finite State Machines and others, when to use them, and how to integrate them into supervision trees.

COURSE OUTLINE

We'll have plenty of time to work on labs along the way as you hone your skills and put the theory into practice.

About half of the class is either lab work or coding side-by-side with your instructor.

Topics include:

• Life before OTP
• OTP architecture
• Behaviours
• Supervision
• GenServer
• GenStateMachine
• Other behaviours (GenStage, GenFlow, Event Handlers, etc)
• Optimizing for performance
• ETS (a Redis in your beam)
• Load regulation and back-pressure (fuse, safety valve)

One of the most exciting features of Elixir is its ability to connect multiple nodes together. Because distribution is built directly into the language’s runtime, those of us in the Elixir world have access to a number of powerful abstractions for building distributed systems.

However, distributed Erlang comes with several caveats and warnings. We will demystify some of the warnings while reiterating others.

In this tutorial, participants will get hands on experience with distributed Erlang through building real solutions to real world problems.

You will learn how to harden their solutions against network and hardware failures using a test harness designed to inject failures into clusters. Whilst the goal is to provide an understanding of the primitives available in Erlang and Elixir for building distributed systems, we’ll also discuss some of the popular libraries available in the BEAM ecosystem.

OBJECTIVES

• Provide insights into the tools available for building distributed systems
• Learn patterns for building consistent and eventually consistent systems
• Experience the different types of faults that you’ll see in the real world

TARGET AUDIENCE

Intermediate Erlang or Elixir developers who want to take advantage of the clustering abilities in OTP.

COURSE OUTLINE

The tutorial is broken into 4 distinct pieces of work. Each section builds on the previous and endeavours to provide real-world scenarios.

• Connecting nodes, sending messages, and handling faults
• Building low latency APIs with replication
• Scaling replication with eventual consistency
• Taking advantage of your computer by distributing work across the cluster