Transcript CAP
CAP Theorem
Justin DeBrabant
CIS 570 - Advanced Systems - Fall 2013
Properties of Distributed Systems
• Consistency
– all nodes have up-to-date view of data
• Availability
– every request receives a response
• Partition Tolerance
– system will continue to function if partitions are
isolated from each other
• Question: Is there a tradeoff here?
CIS 570 - Advanced Systems - Fall 2013
ACID
• Atomicity
– all or nothing
• Consistency
– data is always in a valid state
• Isolation
– concurrently executing transactions are isolated
• Durability
– once committed, changes made by transaction are
permanent
CIS 570 - Advanced Systems - Fall 2013
BASE
• Basically Available Soft-state Eventual
Consistency
– Forfeits the “C” and “I” of ACID in return for
availability
– most NoSQL systems provide BASE instead of ACID
guarantees
CIS 570 - Advanced Systems - Fall 2013
ACID vs. BASE
• ACID
– Focuses on consistency and isolation
• BASE
– weak consistency
• data can be stale
– availability first
– simpler implementation
– faster
• is this always true?
CIS 570 - Advanced Systems - Fall 2013
CAP Theorem
• “At most two.”
– you can have at most two of the CAP properties
for any shared data system
• Disclaimer:
– some question the assumptions used to prove the
“theorem”
– thoughts?
CIS 570 - Advanced Systems - Fall 2013
CIS 570 - Advanced Systems - Fall 2013
Consistency + Availability
• Give up partitions
• Characteristics
– two-phase commit
– cache validation protocols
• Example
– single-site databases
CIS 570 - Advanced Systems - Fall 2013
Consistency + Partitions
• Give up availability
• Characteristics
– pessimistic locking
• Example
– distributed databases
CIS 570 - Advanced Systems - Fall 2013
Availability + Partitions
• Give up consistency
• Characteristics
– optimistic concurrency control
– conflict resolution protocols
• Example
– web caching
– DNS
– NoSQL systems
CIS 570 - Advanced Systems - Fall 2013
Take-Homes
• In real-world systems, there are (probably)
tradeoffs
• Which do you tradeoff?
– depends on…
• workload
• data
• users
– requires a deep understanding of the choices available
• In reality, systems all along this spectrum are
useful in different ways
CIS 570 - Advanced Systems - Fall 2013
Questions?
CIS 570 - Advanced Systems - Fall 2013