The System R retrospective paper is a pretty masterful example of a CS systems paper: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/SystemR.pdf http://www.cs.berkel

The System R retrospective paper is a pretty masterful example of a CS systems paper: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/SystemR.pdf http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/SystemR.pdf It helps that they are describing a pioneering software project and they had the benefit of hindsight, but nonetheless, a great read.