What is the CAP theorem?

What is the CAP theorem?

Approach: State the trade-offs between three guarantees.

In a distributed system, you can only provide two of three guarantees: Consistency (all nodes see the same data), Availability (every request receives a response), and Partition Tolerance (system functions despite network failures).

Follow-up: Which two does a standard SQL database prioritize?

Key concepts: consistency, availability, partition tolerance.