In this episode of Disseminate: The Computer Science Research Podcast, host Jack Waudby sits down with Xiangyao Yu (UW–Madison), one of the leading voices shaping the next generation of cloud-native databases.

We dive deep into disaggregation — the architectural shift transforming how modern data systems are built. Xiangyao breaks down:

• Why traditional shared-nothing databases struggle in cloud environments
• How separating compute and storage unlocks elasticity, scalability, and cost efficiency
• The evolution of disaggregated systems, from Aurora and Snowflake through to advanced pushdown processing and new modular services
• His team's research on reinventing core protocols like 2-phase commit for cloud-native environments
• Real-time analytics, HTAP challenges, and the Hermes architecture
• Where disaggregation goes next — indexing, query optimizers, materialized views, multi-cloud architectures, and more

Whether you're a database engineer, researcher, or a practitioner building scalable cloud systems, this episode gives a clear, accessible look into the architecture that’s rapidly becoming the default for modern data platforms.

Links:

• Xiangyao Yu's Homepage
• Disaggregation: A New Architecture for Cloud Databases [VLDB'25]

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