COS 597D, Fall 2013
Questions on CAP and recovery in noSQL papers

Due at 1:30pm, Wednesday November 6, 2013.
You may hand in a paper copy or email a file to me.
Keep a copy for your use during class discussion.

No credit for late submission.



For our Nov. 6 discussion,  we consider the assessment of CAP by Eric Brewer to give us a high-level context and set of issues. The sections of the Cassandra, Bigtable and GFS papers assigned for Nov. 6 complete the coverage of consistency,  availability and recovery.  As for previous assignments, the questions below ask about the main ideas, and your answers should be brief.  Again, we may wish to dig deeper in class discussion. 
 
1.  Give three important observations about CAP made by Brewer.

2.  In Cassandra, what happens on node failure?   

3.  Mindful of Brewer's discussion, what is the state of Cassandra's consistency (in the CAP sense) and availability in the face of network partition?

4.  In Bigtable, what happens on tablet server failure?

5.  Mindful of Brewer's discussion, what is the state of Bigtable's consistency (in the CAP sense) and availability in the face of network partition?