Last Friday at the New England Database Summit I presented a 15 minute version of my previous Trouble with Transactions talk. My argument is that database interfaces are hard to use. I think there is a opportunity for researchers and vendors to make significant improvements by making developers' lives easier. For users, the database doesn't end at the TCP socket. We need to focus on the APIs and admin tools that people actually interact with.
As a specific example, I used to believe that transactions make programmer's lives easier, so I spent my entire PhD working on systems with strong transactions. However, while building an application that uses databases (Mitro), I've learned that transactions are hard to use and can actually cause bugs. I am planning on writing about this in detail in the future, but for now, you can download my slides.