The CAP Theorem
A system spread across several machines can give you consistent answers, or always answer at all. The network makes you choose.
2000 (conjectured), 2002 (proved)23 min read
American computer science
American computer scientist and database researcher, professor at the University of Maryland and previously at Yale. He worked on column-store systems and on the architecture of distributed databases, and in 2012 proposed PACELC, an extension of CAP that adds the trade-off systems actually face most of the time: when there is no partition, consistency must be paid for in latency.
A system spread across several machines can give you consistent answers, or always answer at all. The network makes you choose.
2000 (conjectured), 2002 (proved)23 min read