CAP Theorem Visualization
Linearizable, causal, bounded staleness, session, eventual — what each one buys you, Cosmos DB's 5 levels, SQL isolation, read-your-writes, and sagas instead of 2PC.
See: CAP Theorem Visualization
The architecture as diagrams, so you can hold the whole system in your head.
Reading Consistency Models is free. Pro unlocks the other four modes on all System Design topics, so you can go from understanding it to building it.
- SeeThe architecture as diagrams, so you can hold the whole system in your head.
- AnimateStep through the flow one stage at a time and watch the data move.
- TestScenario questions with explanations that show exactly where your model of it breaks.
- BuildA guided implementation with code you can run and adapt for production.
Continue reading
All System Design articles →Message Queues: Delivery Semantics, Idempotency, and the Outbox Pattern
Queue vs stream vs topic, why exactly-once is marketing, peek-lock + explicit complete, idempotency tables, the transactional outbox, and Service Bus sessions for FIFO.
Rate Limiting: Token Bucket, Sliding Window, and Distributed Counters
ASP.NET Core RateLimiter, Redis-backed sliding-window in Lua, picking the right partition key, tiering by endpoint cost, and the 429 + Retry-After contract.
Load Balancing: L4 vs L7, P2C, and Health Checks That Actually Catch Failures
Algorithm matrix (round-robin, least-conn, EWMA, P2C, consistent hash), .NET 9 health checks, outlier ejection, the Azure LB service map, and Polly v8 resilience.
Discussion
Sign in to share your feedback and join the discussion.