Here is a list of major database conference papers in 2017: SIGMOD 2017VLDB 2017 (Papers accepted in PVLDB vol 9 and vol 10)ICDE2017CIDR2017The above list is for traditional database conferences. These days the area of database research has widely spread, and you can find database papers even in operating system conferences such as SOSP, and USENIX conferences (e.g., NSDI, FAST, etc.): SOSP 2017NS