The history of PostgreSQL's SERIALIZABLE isolation level implementation is one example of this going well. As far as I remember, the story went something like

The history of PostgreSQL's SERIALIZABLE isolation level implementation is one example of this going well. As far as I remember, the story went something like this, about ten years ago: - organisation employing a PostgreSQL developer asks "can we have SERIALIZABLE that actually does what it says?" - developer says "nobody has that, it's a hard research problem" - developer looks for recent academic research and finds someone with a proposal that might be efficient enough to be practical - developer contacts the researcher - developer and researcher implement the proposal in PostgreSQL - it turns out the design is in fact practical - PostgreSQL gets a useful feature, researcher gets a paper with the developer as co-author Looks like this is the paper: https://pmg.csail.mit.edu/pubs/ports12__serial_snaps_isolat_postg-abstract.html https://pmg.csail.mit.edu/pubs/ports12__serial_snaps_isolat_...