AP : Available under Partitioned conditions (when a n/w partition occurs in a distributed system you still get answers to your queries, but answers may be stale

AP : Available under Partitioned conditions (when a n/w partition occurs in a distributed system you still get answers to your queries, but answers may be stale) [HA means just highly available] CP : Consistent under partitioned conditions (when a n/w partition occurs in a distributed system you may not get answers for all your queries, but when you do get answers, they are not stale and are causally consistent)