Evaluate learners' ability to analyze and justify design trade-offs among consistency, availability, latency, and fault tolerance when building geo‑distributed transactional databases. Scope includes CAP and PACELC reasoning, consistency/isolation models, replication and consensus (Paxos/Raft), quorum sizing, cross‑region latency and its impact on transaction performance, failure modes and recovery, multi‑region transaction patterns, conflict resolution strategies, and interpreting SLA/benchmark results; scenario-based questions should require concrete design choices and rationale.