The world of consistency is rich: not all systems require serializability, linearizability, or any one write winning. It might be interesting to skim http://pmg

The world of consistency is rich: not all systems require serializability, linearizability, or any one write winning. It might be interesting to skim http://pmg.csail.mit.edu/papers/adya-phd.pdf http://pmg.csail.mit.edu/papers/adya-phd.pdf, http://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/tr-95-51.pdf http://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/tr-95-51.pdf, and pagesperso-systeme.lip6.fr/Marc.Shapiro/papers/RR-6956.pdf‎ for a taste.