Optimizing Elixir Applications with Nebulex Caching

Erik Guzman discusses his experience with optimizing his Elixir application by implementing caching using Nebulex, which is a toolkit for local and distributed caching in Elixir. He lays out the basics of Nebulex operations such as inserting with time-to-live, retrieving, counters, and deleting from the cache. Nebulex appealed to Erik due to its ease of setup involving a mix task and its 'Cache as System of Record' pattern, which allows the cache to act as if it were the primary system for storing and retrieving data. This pattern enables more maintainable code and solves problems like the thundering-herd issue. Erik showcases how simple it is to introduce caching in any function within a Phoenix framework application by using decorates such as 'cacheable', 'cache_put', and 'cache_evict' to handle data caching effectively. These decorators help maintain a consistent data state between the application and the cache. The article not only explains how to use these functions but also emphasizes the practicality and intuitiveness of integrating Nebulex into Elixir projects.