Assess students' ability to evaluate CAP theorem trade-offs (consistency, availability, partition tolerance) when selecting a distributed database architecture for a real-time application. Provide one or more network-partition and latency scenarios, ask learners to compare CP, AP (and practical CA limitations), analyze impacts of consistency models (strong vs eventual), replication and sharding strategies, and propose a justified architecture choice with mitigation tactics (quorums, consensus protocols, caching, soft-state). Require clear reasoning about user-experience, failure modes, and design trade-offs.