State ("the database") is hard in distributed systems. Was the package picked up or is it still sitting on a shelf waiting? If your distributed system is partit

State ("the database") is hard in distributed systems. Was the package picked up or is it still sitting on a shelf waiting? If your distributed system is partitioned, different queries may give different answers and your warehouse workers are going to be running around looking for boxes that aren't there. Even if you create a system that is eventually consistent when availability is restored (a difficult problem all by itself, and probably needs a lot of application layer logic), it may not be worth the trouble. Warehouse workers interact with the "perfect" state of the real world, and if the computers don't have access to that, they aren't very useful.