Background:
The SIGMOD Systems Award is awarded to an individual or set of individuals to recognize the development of a software or hardware system whose technical contributions have had significant impact on the theory or practice of large-scale data management systems. The award consists of a plaque and a cash prize of $5000. The SIGMOD Systems Award is intended to recognize data management projects that are innovative, and which have widespread deployment and impact. Not every winner has to be equal in both dimensions, but neither pure research projects (innovation without a practical artifact with widespread impact) nor a pure product (a useful artifact without deep innovation) are good candidates. The SIGMOD Systems Award is selected by the SIGMOD Awards Committee.
Some concrete criteria are as follows:
· Is the project embodied in a piece of software that is widely available?
· Is the software used by a large number of people, and does it have a major practical impact?
· Does the project embody innovative technical ideas?
· Has the project substantially changed the direction of the field?
Eligibility:
Anyone except the current elected officers of SIGMOD (Chair, Vice Chair, and Treasurer), and members of the SIGMOD Awards Committee. Awards should be for contributions not already honored by a major ACM Award (e.g., the Turing Award, SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award, or SIGMOD Contributions Award). A candidate can be considered for multiple awards as long as each is for a distinct contribution.
Nomination:
Anyone in the field may nominate one or more individuals, except for self-nominations. Nominations should specify the system being recognized and include: a proposed citation (up to 25 words) and a concise description of the innovation/contribution (100–250 words), including a justification of its significance and the rationale for selecting the nominees to be explicitly recognized for the system. Along with the nomination, up to three additional supporting letters should be submitted. Such letters should not be simple endorsements of the nomination, but convey additional factual information. The Awards Committee will evaluate all nominations and decide on zero or more winners. The Awards Committee itself is free to identify candidates for the award and is not required to pick among submitted nominations. The committee will automatically re-consider previously submitted nominations from the past two years. However, nominators are welcome to revise the supporting documents for such candidates if they so wish.
Previous winners of the award are listed below.
| 2026 | No award for 2026 | |||
| 2025 | Spanner: Google’s Globally-Distributed Database | [citation] |  |
Contributors: James C. Corbett Jeffrey Dean, Michael Epstein, Andrew Fikes, Christopher Frost, Sanjay Ghemawat, Andrey Gubarev, Christopher Heiser, Peter Hochschild, Wilson Hsieh, Sebastian Kanthak, Alexander Lloyd, Sergey Melnik, David Mwaura, Sean Quinlan, Lindsay Rolig, Yasushi Saito, Michal Szymaniak, Christopher Taylor, Ruth Wang, Dale Woodford, David F. Bacon, Shannon Bales, Nico Bruno, Brian F. Cooper, Adam Dickinson, Campbell Fraser, Milind Joshi, Eugene Kogan, Rajesh Rao, David Shue, Marcel van der Holst, Cliff Frey, Damian Reeves, Steve Middlekauff, Mert Akdere, Ben Vandiver, Dan Glick, David Ziegler, Alex Khesin, Dave Weissman, Todd Lipcon, Sean Dorward, Eric Veach, and JJ Furman |
| 2024 | Apache SINGA | [citation] |  |
Contributors: Zhaojing Luo, Beng Chin Ooi, Wei Wang, Meihui Zhang, Qingchao Cai, Shaofeng Cai, Gang Chen, Tien Tuan Anh Dinh, Jinyang Gao, Qian Lin, Shicong Lin, Kee Yuan Ngiam, Gene Yan Ooi, Moaz Reyad, Kian-Lee Tan, Anthony K. H. Tung, Sheng Wang, Yuncheng Wu, Zhongle Xie, Naili Xing, Rulin Xing, Wanqi Xue, Sai Ho Yeung, James Yip, Lingze Zeng, Zhaoqi Zhang, Kaiping Zheng, Lei Zhu, and Ji Wang. |
| 2023 | Apache Flink | [citation] |  |
The list of contributors listed for the award is just a selection from the list of Apache Flink committers. As an open-source project, Apache Flink received contributions from over 1400 contributors, many of them substantial, who are inevitably not listed below.Aljoscha Krettek, Andrey Zagrebin, Anton Kalashnikov, Arvid Heise, Asterios Katsifodimos, Jiangji (Becket) Qin, Benchao Li, Bowen Li, Caizhi Weng, ChengXiang Li, Chesnay Schepler, Chiwan Park, Congxian Qiu, Daniel Warneke, Danny Cranmer, David Anderson, David Morávek, Dawid Wysakowicz, Dian Fu, Dong Lin, Eron Wright, Etienne Chauchot, Fabian Hueske, Fabian Paul, Feng Wang, Gabor Somogyi, Gary Yao, Godfrey He, Greg Hogan, Guowei Ma, Gyula Fora, Haohui Mai, Henry Saputra, Hequn Cheng, Igal Shilman, Ingo Bürk, Jamie Grier, Jark Wu, Jincheng Sun, Jing Ge, Jing Zhang, Jingsong Lee, Junhan Yang, Konstantin Knauf, Kostas Kloudas, Kostas Tzoumas, Kete (Kurt) Young, Leonard Xu, Lijie Wang, Lincoln Lee, Lungu Andra, Martijn Visser, Marton Balassi, Matthias J. Sax, Matthias Pohl, Matyas Orhidi, Maximilian Michels, Nico Kruber, Niels Basjes, Paris Carbone, Piotr Nowojski, Qingsheng Ren, Robert Metzger, Roman Khachatryan, Rong Rong, Rui Fan, Rui Li, Sebastian Schelter, Seif Haridi, Sergey Nuyanzin, Seth Wiesman, Shaoxuan Wang, Shengkai Fang, Shuyi Chen, Sihua Zhou, Stefan Richter, Stephan Ewen, Theodore Vasiloudis, Thomas Weise, Till Rohrmann, Timo Walther, Tzu-Li (Gordon) Tai, Ufuk Celebi, Vasiliki Kalavri, Volker Markl, Wei Zhong, Weijie Guo, Xiaogang Shi, Xiaowei Jiang, Xingbo Huang, Xingcan Cui, Xintong Song, Yang Wang, Yangze Guo, Yingjie Cao, Yu Li, Yuan Mei, Yun Gao, Yun Tang, Yuxia Luo, Zhijiang Wang, Zhipeng Zhang, Zhu Zhu, and Zili Chen. |
| 2022 | Apache Spark | [citation] |  |
Michael Armbrust, Tathagata Das, Ankur Dave, Wenchen Fan, Michael J. Franklin, Huaxin Gao, Maxim Gekk, Ali Ghodsi, Joseph Gonzalez, Liang-Chi Hsieh, Dongjoon Hyun, Hyukjin Kwon, Xiao Li, Cheng Lian, Yanbo Liang, Xiangrui Meng, Sean Owen, Josh Rosen, Kousuke Saruta, Scott Shenker, Ion Stoica, Takuya Ueshin, Shivaram Venkataraman, Gengliang Wang, Yuming Wang, Patrick Wendell, Reynold Xin, Takeshi Yamamuro, Kent Yao, Matei Zaharia, Ruifeng Zheng, and Shixiong Zhu |
| 2021 | Sloan Digital Sky Survey | [citation] |  |
Michael Blanton, Adam Bolton, Bill Boroski, Joel Brownstein, Robert Brunner, Tamas Budavari, Sam Carliles, Jim Gray, Steve Kent, Peter Kunszt, Gerard Lemson, Nolan Li, Dmitry Medvedev, Jeff Munn, Deoyani Nandrekar-Heinis, Maria Nieto-Santisteban, Wil O’Mullane, Victor Paul, Don Slutz, Alex Szalay, Gyula Szokoly, Manu Taghizadeh-Popp, Jordan Raddick, Bonnie Souter, Ani Thakar, Jan Vandenberg, Benjamin Alan Weaver, Anne-Marie Weijmans, Sue Werner, Brian Yanny, Donald York, and the SDSS collaboration. |
| 2020 | BerkeleyDB | [citation] |  |
Don Anderson, Keith Bostic, Alan Bram, Greg Burd, Michael Cahill, Ron Cohen, Alex Gorrod, George Feinberg, Mark Hayes, Charles Lamb, Linda Lee, Susan LoVerso, John Merrells, Mike Olson, Carol Sandstrom, Steve Sarette, David Schacter, David Segleau, Margo Seltzer, Mike Ubell |
| 2019 | Aurora | [citation] |  |
Xiaofeng Bao, Charlie Bell, Murali Brahmadesam, James Corey, Neal Fachan, Raju Gulabani, Anurag Gupta, Kamal Gupta, James Hamilton, Andy Jassy, Tengiz Kharatishvili, Sailesh Krishnamurthy, Yan Leshinsky, Lon Lundgren, Pradeep Madhavarapu, Sandor Maurice, Grant McAlister, Sam McKelvie, Raman Mittal, Debanjan Saha, Swami Sivasubramanian, Stefano Stefani, Alex Verbitski |
| 2018 | Hive and Pig | [citation] |  |
Jeff Hammerbacher (MUSC), Ashish Thusoo (Qubole), Joydeep Sen Sarma (Qubole), Christopher Olston (Google), Benjamin Reed (Facebook), Utkarsh Srivastava (Google) |
| 2017 | SQLite | [citation] |  |
Richard Hipp |
| 2016 | MonetDB | [citation] |  |
Martin Kersten |
| 2015 | Postgres | [citation] |   |
Michael Stonebraker, Lawrence Rowe |