is CA even possible in a distributed system though? I mean, it’s not like “the network never fails” is a design decision you’re allowed to make (short of removing the network altogether and therefore not being a distributed system at all)
That's what Google spanner is claiming, that Spanner is Consistent and highly-Available (nine fives, or 99.99999% of the time available), which "in practice" they say is "CA".
Re:An Illustrated Proof of the CAP Theorem
by teraflop on Saturday July 14, 2018 @10:34AM
(#17530486)
From the perspective of the CAP theorem, Spanner is unquestionably a CP system, as the original paper [1] makes clear. (It relies on Paxos to elect leaders, and Paxos chooses consistency over availability.)
The "CA in practice" claims are purely marketing.
[1]: https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...
Lots of DB vendors have tried to circumvent the therorem by introducing their own concepts or stretching the definitions. "We can beat the CAP theorem"