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Additional Reading—the CAP Theorem

Explore the CAP theorem to understand the fundamental trade-offs in distributed systems among consistency, availability, and partition tolerance. Learn how these guarantees influence system design decisions and the challenges in balancing them for scalable backend services.

The CAP theorem

Let’s take a break from writing code and take a peek into the decision-making and considerations that usually occur before we start writing our code.

Overview

The CAP theorem, also known as Brewer’s theorem, is a concept that states it is impossible for a distributed data store to simultaneously provide more than two out of the three following guarantees:

  • Consistency: Every read receives the most recent write or an error.

  • Availability: Every request receives a response without a guarantee that it contains the most recent version of the information.

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