OLTP through the looking glass, and what we found there
Stavros Harizopoulos, Daniel J. Abadi, Samuel R. Madden, Michael R Stonebraker · 2008
Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) databases include a suite of features - disk-resident B-trees and heap files, locking-based concurrency control, support for multi-threading - that were optimized for computer technology of the late 1970's. Advances in modern processors, memories, and networks mean that today's computers are vastly different from those of 30 years ago, such that many OLTP databases will now fit in main memory, and most OLTP transactions can be processed in milliseconds or less. Yet database architecture has changed little.