Please stop calling databases CP or AP (2015)
The author argues that the CAP theorem is frequently misunderstood and misused in the context of distributed systems design. They suggest retiring the 'CP' and 'AP' labels in favor of more precise technical terminology to describe system trade-offs.
Why it matters
Encourages more rigorous engineering standards and clearer communication among software architects regarding database consistency and availability.
This blog post has been translated into Russian , Japanese , Chinese , and Chinese again . For more detail on problems with CAP, and a proposal for an alternative, please see my paper A Critique of the CAP Theorem .
In his excellent blog post Notes on Distributed Systems for Young Bloods , Jeff Hodges recommends that you use the CAP theorem to critique systems. A lot of people have taken that advice to heart, describing their systems as “CP” (consistent but not available under network partitions), “AP” (available but not consistent under network partitions), or sometimes “CA” (meaning “I still haven’t read Coda’s post from almost 5 years ago ”).
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