Abstract: Applications have had an interesting evolution as we've moved into the distributed and scalable world. Similarly, storage and its cousin databases have changed side-by-side with applications. Many times, the semantics, performance, and failure models of the storage and applications do a subtle dance as they change in support of changing business requirements and environmental challenges. Adding scale to the mix has really stirred things up. This talk and paper look at some of these issues and their impact on our systems.
Bio: Pat Helland has been building databases, distributed systems, messaging systems, transactional systems, application platforms, big data systems, and multiprocessors since 1978. His employers have included Tandem Computers, Microsoft, and Amazon. Pat attended UC Irvine and was a recipient of the UCI Information and Computer Science Hall of Fame Award (even though he dropped out). For recreation, Pat writes regular articles for the Communications of the ACM. He is employed by Salesforce.