4 ms·

I believe that you're thinking of Michael J. Cahill: https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse444/08au/544M/READING-LIST/fekete-sigmod2008.pdf https://cour

I believe that you're thinking of Michael J. Cahill: https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse444/08au/544M/READING-LIST/fekete-sigmod2008.pdf https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse444/08au/544M/R... This became the basis of PostgreSQL's serializable snapshot isolation feature: https://drkp.net/papers/ssi-vldb12.pdf https://drkp.net/papers/ssi-vldb12.pdf

mjb 6y ago
One funny thing about that VLDB'12 paper is Kevin Grittner's affiliation. Not often you see a state supreme court publishing cutting-edge database research. I'd love to hear the story around that.
- petergeoghegan 6y ago
  I used to work with Kevin, back when I was with VMware. I can confirm that it's an interesting story!
DenisM 6y ago
Quite possible. In the years since my brain has completely unloaded transaction processing to make room for supply chain management, so I can no longer relate to the subject to see if it's the same research. :( I recall I approached him in the break and congratulated him on the fantastic presentation. And it was fantastic - like a murder mystery story, it kept you on the edge of the seat, answering questions it has created earlier and culminating into the answer. An older guy, probably his science advisor, protested that it's not only the presentation that was good, and the research itself was not too shabby. To that I retorted that for all we know there was a lot of good research in the room but we will never find out because delivery was lacking. Research must beget research, it's what makes science from hobby. I think we reached an agreement. I often think back to that moment - what we build should lend itself to further building, or it becomes a dead end. Neither science nor technology are made from dead-ends, the proverbial shoulders of giants must stack up for the civilization to advance.
- petergeoghegan 6y ago
  Here is the thesis itself: https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/handle/2123/5353/michael-cahill-2009-thesis.pdf https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/handle/2123/5353/m... I do remember thinking that it was unusually well argued and presented. It's much more accessible to the practitioner than a lot of the other research in this area. In my experience this is a positive signal about the quality of the research.
  - DenisM 6y ago
    That's gotta be him. I just read the abstract, it's mountain-creek-clear.

mjb 6y ago

One funny thing about that VLDB'12 paper is Kevin Grittner's affiliation. Not often you see a state supreme court publishing cutting-edge database research. I'd love to hear the story around that.

petergeoghegan 6y ago
I used to work with Kevin, back when I was with VMware. I can confirm that it's an interesting story!

DenisM 6y ago

Quite possible. In the years since my brain has completely unloaded transaction processing to make room for supply chain management, so I can no longer relate to the subject to see if it's the same research. :( I recall I approached him in the break and congratulated him on the fantastic presentation. And it was fantastic - like a murder mystery story, it kept you on the edge of the seat, answering questions it has created earlier and culminating into the answer. An older guy, probably his science advisor, protested that it's not only the presentation that was good, and the research itself was not too shabby. To that I retorted that for all we know there was a lot of good research in the room but we will never find out because delivery was lacking. Research must beget research, it's what makes science from hobby. I think we reached an agreement. I often think back to that moment - what we build should lend itself to further building, or it becomes a dead end. Neither science nor technology are made from dead-ends, the proverbial shoulders of giants must stack up for the civilization to advance.

petergeoghegan 6y ago
Here is the thesis itself: https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/handle/2123/5353/michael-cahill-2009-thesis.pdf https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/handle/2123/5353/m... I do remember thinking that it was unusually well argued and presented. It's much more accessible to the practitioner than a lot of the other research in this area. In my experience this is a positive signal about the quality of the research.
- DenisM 6y ago
  That's gotta be him. I just read the abstract, it's mountain-creek-clear.