Brewers Conjecture and a characterization of the limits, and relationships between Consistency, Availability and Partition Tolerance in a distributed service

TL;DR

This paper explores the fundamental trade-offs and relationships between consistency, availability, and partition tolerance in distributed services, providing a framework to understand their limits.

Contribution

It introduces a framework that characterizes the limits and relationships among the three attributes, building on Brewers Conjecture.

Findings

Defines the limits of consistency, availability, and partition tolerance in distributed systems.

Establishes relationships and trade-offs between the three attributes.

Implications for designing resilient distributed services.

Abstract

In designing a distributed service, three desirable attributes are Consistency, Availability and Partition Tolerance. In this note we explore a framework for characterizing these three in a manner that establishes definite limits and relationships between them, and explore some implications of this characterization.