Eventual Consistency
Eventual consistency guarantees that once updates stop, all replicas eventually converge to the same value, without promising when.
Purpose
To design the core consistency model of highly available NoSQL systems, balancing availability against consistency.
Mechanism
Asynchronous replication leaves replicas temporarily inconsistent; anti-entropy (read repair, merkle-tree sync) and gossip protocols eventually converge them. Reads may return stale values (stale reads).
Use cases
- NoSQL replication design
- Read repair strategies
- Anti-entropy mechanisms