State-oriented consistency: Why we stopped looking for one right answer
Every distributed system has different kinds of state The mistake we made, early on, was asking the wrong question. We kept asking: "Which consistency model should the cluster use?" The useful question turned out to be: "Which consistency guarantee does this specific piece of state actually need?" Those sound similar. The first one assumes a single answer exists for the whole system.
- ▪Every distributed system has different kinds of state The mistake we made, early on, was asking the wrong question.
- ▪We kept asking: "Which consistency model should the cluster use?" The useful question turned out to be: "Which consistency guarantee does this specific piece of state actually need?" Those sound similar.
- ▪The first one assumes a single answer exists for the whole system.
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| Original publisher | Keel |
| Canonical URL | https://keel-iot.eu/blog/state-oriented-consistency.html |
| Publication time | Thu, 06 Aug 2026 19:54:19 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-06T22:05:41.516Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-06T22:05:41.516Z |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Every distributed system has different kinds of state The mistake we made, early on, was asking the wrong question. We kept asking: "Which consistency model should the cluster use?" The useful question turned out to be: "Which consistency guarantee does this specific piece of state actually need?" Those sound similar. They aren't. The first one assumes a single answer exists for the whole system. The second one assumes it doesn't — and it's the second one that this whole piece converges on, in the form of one table that, by the end, does most of the explaining for us. We discovered the difference the hard way while building a clustered message broker. The lesson underneath has very little to do with MQTT.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Keel.
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