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Showing posts from July 9, 2023

Understanding the CAP Theorem: A Guiding Principle for Distributed Systems

As the world becomes increasingly connected, the systems that power our digital interactions need to be robust, reliable, and efficient. Behind the scenes, these systems often rely on distributed databases, where data is spread across multiple nodes (machines) to optimize performance, reliability, and scalability. But designing these systems isn't as straightforward as it may seem. In this post, we're going to delve into a fundamental principle that guides their design: the CAP Theorem. The CAP Theorem: A Fundamental Balancing Act Introduced by computer scientist Eric Brewer in 2000, the CAP Theorem is a fundamental principle in distributed systems design. It posits that it's impossible for a distributed data store to simultaneously provide more than two out of the following three guarantees: Consistency: Every read receives the most recent write or an error. In other words, all nodes see the same data at the same time. Availability: Every request receives a non-error resp