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> The classic transaction example of a "bank transfer" is hilariously mis-representative - ACH is very obviously not implemented using an inter-bank database that supports serializable transactions.

This is meant more as a pedagogical tool rather than a literal representation of how the system works. The intra-bank aspects of ACH absolutely do rely on serializable transactions.

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I would find it hard to question with CMU papers. They are a pretty thorough when it comes to computer and the tradition goes wayback. If I disagreed with something in this paper it would be a clue to myself that I need to understand the problem domain better.

I also think as a school the philosophy maybe to thoroughly solve the problem with out regard to speed because eventually computers will be faster.

I think the paper is just pointing out that anything great is going to migrate to the RM or SQL model. So that if you start there any feature missing will show eventually show up. They also point out how many resources go to deploying immature ideas.

I read a lot of Stonebraker's work as an undergrad and spent 3+ years at Google working on databases. I like to think that I know some things about databases, even if I wasn't around when XML databases were a thing :)

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