> Details at http://ewh.ieee.org/r1/boston/computer/starkeytalk.html

Unfortunately its too far to attend.

From the details page you link to, I get the impression that you will be making three points during the lecture:

[1] Under MVCC/snapshot isolation each connection has its own database state, as it can 'see' its own uncommited changes
[2] In a distributed database non-conflicting transactions can commit in a different order on each node; only when quiesced will the state become the same (i.e. the Kemme R(SI) paper)
[3] If we architect an rdbms for current workloads and hardware, it looks quite different from traditional approaches (i.e. the Stonebreaker "complete rewrite" paper)

Would that be a fair summary of your talk?

Paul