Big Data

Storage and Database Management for Big Data

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2.5.3 CAP theorem

The CAP theorem is a seminal theorem [13] used to specify what guarantees can be provided by

a distributed database. The CAP theorem states that no distributed database can simultaneously

provide strong guarantees on the consistency, availability, and partition tolerance of a database.

This is often stated as the two-out-of-three rule, though in reality it is more of a loose guarantee

rather than losing the guarantee completely. In practice partition tolerance is an important

aspect of NoSQL distributed databases; the two-out-of-three rule of the CAP theorem implies

that most such