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Introduction to CAP Theorem

Every distributed system runs on more than one machine, and those machines talk to each other over a network. Networks fail. Cables get cut, switches die, a data center loses its uplink for ninety seconds.

The CAP theorem is the rule that tells you what your system is allowed to do when that happens. It was introduced by the computer scientist Eric Brewer.

The Three Things You Want

A distributed system that stores data usually wants three things at once.

  1. Consistency (C). Every read returns the most recent write, no matter which machine answers it.
  2. **Availability (A)

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Sid D

Sid D

· a year ago

Does it mean that an RDBMS isn’t partition tolerant? Not functional if network goes down between nodes?

how does it provide C & A at the same time? Can you give an example

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S

Sunderamurthy

· 2 years ago

The CAP theorem is often misrepresented as choosing two properties out of three. In reality, it was created to raise awareness among developers about the impossibility of achieving both consistency and availability in the event of a network partition.