Or perhaps they wanted something theoritical that advances the state of the art in database design and architecture (which is the whole purpose of academic reasearch/conference/etc) - not merely some report describing doing something that's already been done for a different DB.
Condescending? That's the mission of a scientific journal / conference / etc. Doesn't mean practical development work is "less worthy", but it's not a fit for them.
I disagree. I think it's very important to see how can those papers be turned into real things. Rejecting something for too practical is a joke, and if I ever find out who gave us that review, I'll have a talk with them.