CAP principle

The CAP principle is a concept in distributed systems that states it's impossible for a system to simultaneously guarantee all three of these qualities: Consistency (all users see the same data at the same time), Availability (the system is always responsive), and Partition Tolerance (the system continues to operate despite network failures). In practice, systems must choose which two of these are most critical. For example, during network issues, a system might prioritize availability and partition tolerance, accepting that data may become temporarily inconsistent. The CAP principle helps guide design decisions for reliable distributed computing.