Explain the CAP theorem in distributed systems

#9
by SrRooT - opened

Haiku 4.5 https://claude.ai/share/dd267280-cedd-485d-a4ca-e077c1104583

😃: Explain the CAP theorem in distributed systems
🤖: CAP theorem (Consistency‑Availability‑Partition tolerance)

In a distributed system three fundamental properties are considered:

Property What it means
Consistency (C) Every read sees the most recent write (i.e., the system behaves as if there is a single, up‑to‑date copy of the data).
Availability (A) Every request receives a response (success or failure) without waiting for network messages or other nodes.
Partition tolerance (P) The system continues to operate despite arbitrary network partitions (communication failures between subsets of nodes).

The theorem (formalized by Gilbert & Lynch, based on Eric Brewer’s “ Brewer’s conjecture”) states that in the presence of a network partition, a distributed system can guarantee at most two of the three properties. In other words, you must choose...

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