Strong versus eventual consistency in NoSQL
WHAT IT TESTS: consistency tradeoffs. OUTLINE: strong reads see the latest write at higher latency and cost, eventual reads may be stale but are cheaper and faster, match the choice to stakes. RED FLAG: calling eventual consistency simply broken.
WHAT IT TESTS: the latency, cost, and correctness tradeoff between consistency models. ANSWER OUTLINE: strong consistency guarantees a read returns the most recent committed write, but it coordinates across replicas, costing higher latency, lower availability during partitions, and in DynamoDB double the read capacity. Eventual consistency lets replicas converge over time, so reads may be briefly stale but are faster and cheaper. RED FLAG: framing eventual consistency as a bug, or claiming strong is always the right choice.
Read the original → interview
- #consistency
- #dynamodb
- #cosmos-db
- #nosql
- #distributed-systems
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