Beyond CRUD: Advanced Features of Fastly's KV Store

Fastly's KV Store is a versatile key-value storage solution that extends beyond basic CRUD operations, offering advanced features that enhance application development at the edge. With a globally distributed and durable architecture, it allows for fast edge-accessible storage that is eventually consistent. Key advanced features include metadata, which allows for smart data management by attaching up to 2048 bytes of UTF-8 string data to entries without requiring a schema; generation markers, which provide lightweight concurrency protection by using version control on data entries; insert-only writes, which ensure data is written once to avoid race conditions; and TTL (Time-To-Live), which automatically cleans up temporary data. These features enable sophisticated use cases such as CMS-like content management, configuration management with safe updates, A/B testing, preview deployments, and efficient static site serving. Fastly's KV Store's capabilities are already available for use in enhancing distributed systems, with examples like the Compute Static Publisher showcasing its potential.