Build ‘Availability First’ Systems with Elixir + DataStax Astra

DataStax Astra and Elixir are powerful tools for building fault-tolerant distributed systems that prioritize scale without sacrificing performance or resilience. Elixir, with its functional approach to programming and OTP tools, allows developers to create a set of fault-tolerant app servers that share information and events. Astra, built on Apache Cassandra, prefers availability over immediate consistency, making it an ideal datastore for this type of system. Together, they form an Availability First (AF) architecture that eliminates deadlocking behavior and supports scalable and durable systems. DataStax recently released an Elixir library for Astra's REST, GraphQL, and Document JSON APIs, including a reference chat app demonstrating the benefits of the Astra + Elixir stack.