Dropping ACID: Architecting with Eventual Consistency in the Cloud

It's impossible for any distributed computer system to simultaneously guarantee immediate consistency, availability, and partition tolerance. Most enterprise DBMSs are inherently partition intolerant, thus allowing for ACID transactionality. However, Cloud Computing environments must be partition tolerant in order to achieve the elasticity benefit so important to the Cloud. Highly available Cloud applications must therefore forego immediate data consistency, and with it, ACID. What's left? BASE: Basic availability, soft state, and eventual consistency.

This session will explore how eventual data consistency affects architecting -- and rearchitecting -- applications for a Cloud environment. We'll discard the common misconception that the Cloud is a "virtual server in the sky," and explore how architects must think differently about architecting for Cloud environments vs. traditional on-premise computing.

Attendees of this session will:

Get a solid grounding in the CAP theorem and BASE
Understand the special data requirements Cloud Computing presents when architecting applications
Think differently about basic concepts like transactionality and consistency

Jason Bloomberg is the leading industry analyst and globally recognized expert on agile digital transformation. He writes and speaks on how today’s disruptive enterprise technology trends support the digital professional’s business transformation goals. He writes for Forbes, his biweekly newsletter the Cortex, several contributed blogs, and he helps technology vendors and service providers communicate their digital transformation stories. His latest book is The Agile Architecture Revolution (Wiley, 2013). Mr. Bloomberg has published over 900 articles, spoken at over 350 conferences, webinars, and other events, and has been quoted in the press over 1,500 times. At SOA-focused industry analyst firm ZapThink, Mr. Bloomberg created and delivered the Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) SOA course and associated credential, certifying over 1,700 professionals worldwide. He is one of the original Managing Partners of ZapThink LLC, which was acquired by Dovel Technologies in 2011.