Explanation of BASE terminology

Question

The BASE acronym is used to describe the properties of certain databases  usually NoSQL databases  It s often referred to as the opposite of ACID   There are only few articles that touch upon the details of BASE  whereas ACID has plenty of articles that elaborate on each of the atomicity  consistency  isolation and durability properties  Wikipedia only devotes a few lines to the term   This leaves me with some questions about the definition      Basically Available  Soft state  Eventual consistency   I have interpreted these properties as follows  using this article and my imagination   Basically available could refer to the perceived availability of the data  If a single node fails  part of the data won t be available  but the entire data layer stays operational    Is this interpretation correct  or does it refer to something else  Update  deducing from Mau s answer  could it mean the entire data layer is always accepting new data  i e  there are no locking scenarios that prevent data from being inserted immediately    Soft state  All I could find was the concept of data needing a period refresh  Without a refresh  the data will expire or be deleted    Automatic deletion of data in a database seems strange to me  Expired or stale data makes more sense  But this concept would apply to any type of redundant data storage  not just NoSQL  Does it describe something else then    Eventual consistency means that updates will eventually ripple through to all servers  given enough time    This property is clear to me      Can someone explain these properties in detail   Or is it just a far-fetched and meaningless acronym that refers to the concepts of acids and bases as found in chemistry

User · Answer

It has to do with BASE  the BASE jumper kind is always Basically Available  to new relationships   in a Soft state  none of his relationship last very long  and Eventually consistent  one day he will get married

User · Answer

Basic Availability  The database appears to work most of the time  Soft State  Stores don   t have to be write-consistent or mutually consistent all the time  Eventual consistency  Data should always be consistent  with regards how any number of changes are performed

User · Answer

It could just be because ACID is one set of properties that substances show  in Chemistry  and BASE is a complement set of them So it could be just to show the contrast between the two that the acronym was made up and then  Basically Available Soft State Eventual Consistency  was decided as it s full-form

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The BASE acronym was defined by Eric Brewer  who is also known for formulating the CAP theorem   The CAP theorem states that a distributed computer system cannot guarantee all of the following three properties at the same time    Consistency Availability Partition tolerance   A BASE system gives up on consistency    Basically available indicates that the system does guarantee availability  in terms of the CAP theorem  Soft state indicates that the state of the system may change over time  even without input  This is because of the eventual consistency model  Eventual consistency indicates that the system will become consistent over time  given that the system doesn t receive input during that time    Brewer does admit that the acronym is contrived      I came up with  the BASE  acronym with my students in their office earlier that year  I agree it is contrived a bit  but so is  ACID  -- much more than people realize  so we figured it was good enough

User · Answer

To add to the other answers  I think the acronyms were derived to show a scale between the two terms to distinguish how reliable transactions or requests where between RDMS versus Big Data   From this article acid vs base     In Chemistry  pH measures the relative basicity and acidity of an   aqueous  solvent in water  solution  The pH scale extends from 0    highly acidic substances such as battery acid  to 14  highly alkaline   substances like lie   pure water at 77   F  25   C  has a pH of 7 and is   neutral        Data engineers have cleverly borrowed acid vs base from chemists and   created acronyms that while not exact in their meanings  are still apt   representations of what is happening within a given database system   when discussing the reliability of transaction processing    One other point  since I work with Big Data using Elasticsearch   To clarify  an instance of Elasticsearch is a node and a group of nodes form a cluster    To me from a practical standpoint  BA  Basically Available   in this context  has the idea of multiple master nodes to handle the Elasticsearch cluster and it s operations     If you have 3 master nodes and the currently directing master node goes down  the system stays up  albeit in a less efficient state  and another master node takes its place as the main directing master node  If two master nodes go down  the system still stays up and the last master node takes over

User · Answer

ACID and BASE are consistency models for RDBMS and NoSQL respectively  ACID transactions are far more pessimistic i e  they are more worried about data safety  In the NoSQL database world  ACID transactions are less fashionable as some databases have loosened the requirements for immediate consistency  data freshness and accuracy in order to gain other benefits  like scalability and resiliency    BASE stands for -    Basic Availability - The database appears to work most of the time  Soft-state - Stores don t have to be write-consistent  nor do different replicas have to be mutually consistent all the time  Eventual consistency - Stores exhibit consistency at some later point  e g   lazily at read time        Therefore BASE relaxes consistency to allow the system to process request even in an inconsistent state     Example  No one would mind if their tweet were inconsistent within their social network for a short period of time  It is more important to get an immediate response than to have a consistent state of users  information

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