From transactions to replica consistency: towards strict serializability

A journey through transactions and replica consistency leading to strict serializability

Seshadri Srinivasan (aka Sesh) will explain how transactions came from the database community and replica consistency from the distributed systems community. Over the last decade, distributed databases have tried to merge ideas from both.

This talk will cover serializability and linearizability. Sesh will give a quick tour of how industrial systems implement serializability, including two-phase locking, optimistic concurrency control, timestamp ordering, MVCC, and linearizability (Paxos, Raft). He will explain how these concepts alone don’t ensure correctness in a distributed database, where transactions operate on multiple records with multiple replicas. Sesh will then motivate the need for strict serializability in distributed databases as the gold standard for correctness.

Who should attend?

This talk offers a comprehensive understanding of key concepts such as transactions, replication, and databases, making it an ideal session for professionals at any stage of their career. You’ll unlock the principles of transactions, replication, and distributed databases - critical concepts for anyone working with modern systems. Whether you’re just starting or are an experienced architect, this session has something valuable for you.

📈 For early career professionals - solidify your foundation in the core principles of transactions and replication; understand the mechanics behind databases, setting you up for long-term success in your career.

🚀 For advanced engineers & architects - tackle complex challenges; learn how to guarantee correctness in distributed systems. Explore cutting-edge techniques for building and maintaining scalable, fault-tolerant applications.

🛠️ For Database Builders - get hands-on knowledge to design and optimize databases that meet the needs of modern, high-performance applications.

No matter where you are in your career, this talk will equip you with actionable insights to level up your work with distributed systems.

🎤 About the speaker

Sesh is a veteran technology leader with over 30 years of experience in academia, startups, and large companies. He is an expert in databases with over 50 academic publications and 12+ patents, and a leader in applying ML to Search and Internet Advertising. Sesh has held senior roles at Google, Target, Yahoo, and Lucent Technologies, and founded successful startups in Silicon Valley and India. Sesh currently is the Chief Evangelist at Aerospike.

📚 About the curator

Anirudh Rowjee is an engineer with a passion for distributed systems. He has curated the Distributed Data Systems track at Rootconf.
Anirudh works at Couchbase on Magma, an open-source project revolutionizing data management.
Outside of his day job, Anirudh co-organizes the Bengaluru Systems meet-up.

👀 Meet the reviewers - who work with the presenter on feedback and prep

• Mallikarjun - Architect at Flipkart HBase team. Solves everything around databases, distributed systems otherwise.
• Shriram Balaji - Senior software engineer at Microsoft.

🤝 Bengaluru Systems Meet-up - community partners

Super stoked to partner with Bengaluru Systems Meetup to promote the meet-up and grow the audience pool for participation. May the tribe systems tribes collaborate and grow!

🏢 Venue host

Thank you to the hosts for this meet-up, Sahaj Software, and to Rohan Reddy Alleti for volunteering to support with the venue.

🎟️ How to attend?

✅ FREE and OPEN to all for in-person participation.
❓Still checking options for live stream and remote participation. If you want a live stream, consider supporting Rootconf by picking an annual membership. Your membership contribution will help us mobilize the funds and resources for live streaming this, and other meet-ups.

📞 Contact

☎️ Call: 7676332020
📧 Email: info@hasgeek.com
💬 Comment: Meet-up forum