"We can easily see how to get linearizable consistency if we route all requests [for a partition or region] through a single master [like all the systems you listed]. In a fully distributed system, it is less obvious."
Again, the innovation here is not the functionality per se, which is surely not novel to any INGRES user from the 70s. The innovation is in implementing and integrating it for an eventually-consistent, Dynamo style system.
As for the name, well, there are two hard problems in computer science. Early talks about "putting CAS in Cassandra" got me a lot of blank looks; lightweight transactions seems to work quite well to get the audience/reader in the right conceptual neighborhood.
Again, the innovation here is not the functionality per se, which is surely not novel to any INGRES user from the 70s. The innovation is in implementing and integrating it for an eventually-consistent, Dynamo style system.
As for the name, well, there are two hard problems in computer science. Early talks about "putting CAS in Cassandra" got me a lot of blank looks; lightweight transactions seems to work quite well to get the audience/reader in the right conceptual neighborhood.