Brain Dump

Consistency

Tags
sys-design

Refers to the consistency part of CAP.

Weak Consistency

After a write, reads may or may not see it. A best effort approach is taken.

Works well in real time cases such as video-chat, real-time multiplayer-games. For example if you lose connection in the middle of a phone call you don't hear the lost speech after a connection is re-established.

Eventual Consistency

After a write, reads will eventually see it (typically within ms). Data is replicated asynchronously.

This approach works well in highly available systems (eg. DNS or email).

Strong Consistency

After a write, reads will see it. Data is replicated synchronously.

This approach is seen in file systems and RDBMSes. Strong consistency works well in systems that need transactions.