8 karma · joined May 11, 2015
I think it is clear that the much broader user/marketing/coder community has a much less rigid definition of these terms. In my opinion, fighting against terms or ideas getting watered down is a lost cause. It inevitably happens and there is very little that can be done to stop it.
As I said in another reply really the battle cry should be something along the lines of "Every database needs a real thoughtful precise technical breakdown" not "Stop using terminology that gives a brief, if imprecise, overview of the product". Because the later is almost certainly not going to happen.
Quick less-precise overviews serve a real purpose and are very helpful to users and decision makers.
I guess my opinion is projects should never ONLY say it is CP or AP, but I think it is perfectly acceptable in your project overview to say: This database is CP*. Then have a longer technical discussion somewhere else where they use more precise and thoughtful language.
I understand and agree with the sentiment, but we humans need fuzzy short overviews. Then again a blog post titled: "All databases need an in-depth technical discussion page" doesn't quite capture the imagination.
While calling one CP or AP may not correctly capture all the nuance of what those terms really mean it does give the user a quick idea of the capabilities of the database without having to go into a mutli-paragraph technical breakdown.
It's like describing a house as "orange", there are a million shades of "orange" and it might actually be closer to red or yellow but it gives a quick idea of what the house looks like. I feel the description CP and AP does the same, it gives a quick overview of the capabilities and if that interests you, one should be able to dig in deeper to the more technical details.