While reading Advanced Operating Systems research paper, I found myself following the citations, flipping to the last page and scribbling down the referenced papers because I want to learn more about database systems. In particular, I’m interested in learning more about building reliable software that withstand unexpected failures by using transactions, the techniques and methods. On a separate note, I really do think that Georgia Tech’s OMSCS program should offer a more advanced database course since the introduction to database system seems to only cover high level concepts such as SQL queries and writing web applications, two areas that I’ve already been exposed to in the past.

Papers

• Concurrent programming and building highly-concurrent transasctional objects: M. Herlihy and E. Koskinen. Transactional boosting: A methodology for highly-concurrent transactional objects. In PPoPP, 2008.
• Creation of a transactional operating system called TxLinux: H. Ramadan, C. Rossbach, D. Porter, O. Hofmann,
  A. Bhandari, and E. Witchel. MetaTM/TxLinux: Transactional memory for an operating system. In ISCA,
  2007
• One of the most cited books on database transactions (my guess is Gray is the father of database systems): J. Gray and A. Reuter. Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques. Morgan Kaufmann, 1993.
• Introduces a new primitive called a transactional spinlock: C. Rossbach, O. Hofmann, D. Porter, H. Ramadan,
  A. Bhandari, and E. Witchel. TxLinux: Using and managing
  transactional memory in an operating system. In SOSP, 2007.
• Concurrently writing to lists – M. Herlihy and E. Koskinen. Transactional boosting: A methodology for highly-concurrent transactional objects. In PPoPP, 2008.
• Skip lists – W. Pugh. Skip lists: a probabilistic alternative to balanced trees. Communications of the ACM, 33:668–676, 1990.
• Two phased commit protocols – J. Gray. Notes on data base operating systems. In Operating Systems, An Advanced Course. Springer-Verlag, 1978.