[mjb]

Best of all, /dev/null is also serializable (but not strict serializable) under many academic and textbook definitions.

Specifically, these definitions require that transactions appear to execute in some serial order, and place no constraints on that serial order. So the database can issue all reads at time zero, returning empty results, and all writes at the time they happen (because who the hell cares?).

The lesson? Demand real-time guarantees.

[mjb]

This doesn't work as cleanly for SQL-style transactions where there are tons of RW transactions, sadly.