Linearisability

The strictest single-object guarantee: once a write completes, every later read anywhere sees it, in real-time order. Needed for locks, leader election and unique constraints.

Where it shows up in real systems

  • Distributed SQL

    Each write is committed through a consensus protocol (Raft or Paxos), so it is never lost and every read is up to date, even across regions. The price is latency: a write must reach a majority of replicas, and across regions that means tens of milliseconds.

    In production: Google Cloud Spanner, CockroachDB, YugabyteDB, TiDB, Amazon Aurora DSQL

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