# CAP Theorem States that it is impossible for a distributed data store to provide all three of the following guarantees: - [[Database Consistency]] - [[Database Availability]] and - [[Partition Tolerance]]. If the data store guarantees both [[Database Consistency]] and [[Database Availability]], and several nodes happen to go offline, when you receive an operation you can either cancel it until the offline nodes come back and thus sacrifice availability for the sake of consistency (of the offline nodes), or you can proceed with the operation and risk inconsistency (of the offline nodes), or you can permanently sever the connection with the offline nodes (and thus partition the data store).