Database Management Systems · Distributed systems

CAP theorem

You can't have perfect consistency, availability, and partition tolerance all at once, pick two.

Also known as: consistency availability partition tolerance.

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Learn first

• Distributed databases: A database whose data lives across multiple machines instead of one.

Leads to

• Consistency models: How strictly a distributed database insists every read sees the latest write, versus allowing some staleness.

Related topics

• Consistency models: How strictly a distributed database insists every read sees the latest write, versus allowing some staleness.
• Replication and sharding: Copying data across machines for redundancy versus splitting it across machines for scale.