Eventual consistency
The property of a distributed system where related data reaches a consistent state over time, not immediately — a fundamental trade-off in Dynamics 365 integration architectures.
Eventual consistency is the property of distributed systems where related data across multiple stores reaches a consistent state over time rather than immediately. Common in Dynamics 365 integrations: a sales order placed in Sales eventually appears in Business Central; a customer update in Dataverse eventually propagates to downstream subscribers; a Dual-write sync between F&O and Dataverse has small delays. The trade-off: strong consistency requires synchronous coordination (slower, fragile under failure); eventual consistency tolerates delays in exchange for availability and scale. Design integrations recognising eventual consistency — users see "your order is being processed" while async flows complete; downstream systems may be seconds-to-minutes behind the source; reports clarify "as of" timestamps for stale data.