CAP theorem is perhaps the best-known statement of the tradeoffs in distributed systems, between consistency, availability, and “partition tolerance.” Normally we think of the CAP theorem as applying to databases, but it applies to all distributed systems. Centralized databases do well at consistency and availability, but suck at partition tolerance; so do authoritarian government structures.

apenwarr

Systems Design Explains the World: Volume 1

Source

Databases are distributed systems and so are human organizations of any size.