CAP is not a menu of two letters per system. The scored answer knows what the theorem claims (narrowly), what most engineers misquote, and what a split-brain costs when both halves accept writes.
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A network partition split your database cluster in half and both sides kept serving writes. What does CAP predict about this?
CAP is not a menu of two letters per system. The scored answer knows what the theorem claims (narrowly), what most engineers misquote, and what a split-brain costs when both halves accept writes.
Updated Sep 2026 · Grounded in researched DevOps, SRE and platform engineering interview loops, written to a senior-engineer editorial bar, and never padded to hit a word count.
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