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CAP Theorem

Foundational Concept

A result stating that a distributed data store cannot simultaneously guarantee consistency, availability and partition tolerance, and must sacrifice at least one, in practice usually consistency or availability, whenever a network partition occurs.

Facts
Origin Year
2000 1
Core Principle
Any distributed data store can provide at most two of three guarantees. 1
Connections

In Field

Invented

Eric Brewer, Pioneers

Eric Brewer conjectured the CAP theorem in a 2000 keynote address on distributed systems trade-offs.

Nancy Lynch, Pioneers

Nancy Lynch co-authored (with Seth Gilbert) the 2002 paper that formally proved Brewer's CAP conjecture.

Sources
1. Wikipedia: CAP theorem
  • Lead, second paragraph
    It was published as the CAP principle in 1999 and presented as a conjecture by Brewer at the 2000 Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC).
  • Lead, first sentence
    states that any distributed data store can provide at most two of the following three guarantees
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