Causal Consistency

Kind: model

Layer: Causality Core

Record: architecture:causal-consistency

Severity: contextual

Scope: distributed data, events

Canonical: Ontology

A conceptual representation of a consistency guarantee in which no reader sees an effect before its cause.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Causality and before Happens-Before Relationship.

Requires

• Causal Ordering

Reinforces

• Eventual Consistency Safety

Enables

• User-Visible Ordering Guarantees

Conflicts with

• Arbitrary Reordering
• Read-Your-Writes Violation

In tension with

• Latency/Availability

Tensions

• Causal Consistency / Latency/Availability

Violated by

• Arbitrary Reordering

Refactored by

• Causation ID
• Read From Primary After Write

Severity

• contextual

Category

• Causality / Ordering / Distributed Time

Reinforced by

• Vector Clocks
• Hybrid Logical Clocks
• CRDTs
• CAP Theorem

Linked from

• The ceiling moves by cost
• Anti-patterns
• Causality / Ordering / Distributed Time
• Event / Messaging / Asynchronous Architecture
• Causality / Ordering / Distributed Time
• Transactions / State / Concurrency
• Severity levels
• The resolutions