TECHNICAL PERSPECTIVE: Ad Hoc Transactions: What They Are and WhyWe Should Care

Most database research papers are prescriptive. They identify a technical problem and show us how to solve it. They present new algorithms, theorems, and evaluations of prototypes. Other papers follow a different path: descriptive rather than prescriptive. They tell us how data systems behave in practice, and how they are actually used. They employ a different set of tools, such as surveys, software analyses or user studies. These papers are much rarer at database research conferences, and they're all the more valuable for that.