4 ms·

The formal definition for Available is given in TFA.

• stevebmark 2y ago
  "No formal definition" includes where we are today, not the original, outdated idea. By the original (not useful) definition, an "available" distributed system can return a response 10 years later, which is not helpful nor relevant when thinking about distributed systems.
  • jeremyjh 2y ago
    What has changed that makes the idea out-dated? You can argue that it was always unhelpful but I can't see how it could be out-dated. You're correct that the theorem doesn't address latency requirements. There are all kinds of things it doesn't address. The point of it is simply as you say - you must give up consistency to have availability in the face of a partition, or vice-versa. Some vendors of distributed systems would have us believe otherwise. This theorem gives us a framework to understand at a very basic level the trade-offs that must be made in distributed system implementations. That isn't really very much for as much airtime as it got, which I suspect is what your contention is with.