This is my brother Bubba, and this is my other brother Bubba

One lazy summer morning several years after I moved to Memphis I was out mowing the lawn when a beat up red station wagon sputtered to a stop in front of my house. A young woman wearing blue jean shorts and a tube top emerged followed by a very large fellow wearing overalls with no shirt underneath. A moment later another even larger fellow exited the back seat. (I can't recall what he was wearing.) As I wandered over to the car the young lady dispatched the first fellow with the statement "Bubba, go check that we're really out of gas". I volunteered that I had gas for the lawn mower across they yard. This time the lady fixed her eye on the other fellow and told him "Bubba, go help him carry the gas over here". When I questioned whether both fellows where in fact named Bubba I was told that neither was really named Bubba but both her brothers where called Bubba. I don't know about you, but that that certainly cleared up any confusion I might have had...

Having done data modeling for many years I can't help but wonder whether the family tree in this particular case was in fact acyclic. I suspect neither Bubba would have known what I meant by such a query, but both of them would have been able to tell me how they "was related to each other".

The reason for my rambling on about this here is to point at an ongoing discussion about relationships known as xml-dev. This mailing list is obstensibly about XML related issues. Turns out you can't really get very far in talking about XML before you get to talking about how things are related to each other. To me, it is this underlying theme to xml-dev that is the most important reason to read the list. Ultimately, what we do with information systems is to attempt to relate pieces of data together so that we can get some better understanding of the data. Relational databases, Resource Description Framework (RDF), Ontologies, the semantic web, triples, tuples. All different ways of getting at the same issue.

As posts turn up on xml-dev that help to illuminate this central issue I will on occasion point to them here:

The first of these is on the issue of dynamically generated schema. The conclusion I arrived at as I worked through this discussion is that currently there is no good way to model all the different ways that things are related to each other.

The second thread is even longer and more dispersed. It started as a discussion on what standards needed attention after XQuery but much of the discussion ended up centered on the theme of how do we relate things to each other. My conclusion this time is that the ultimate goal of the semantic web is admirable, but a long way from fruition.

Evidence of brain tampering by space aliens

Friday I had LASIK. I really hadn’t had all that much time to contemplate the implications of the process before I did it. We have two children 19 months and 5 years and between home and work time for reflection is rare. Saturday we attended a dinner party and after a couple of conversations where I described the procedure I got to thinking about the whole process. Some guy, who I’ve previously met for all of 2 minutes took tiny little diamond coated knives and cut open my eyeballs and then proceeded to burn off parts of the insides of them with a high powered laser. Not only did I volunteer for this process, but I paid good money for it. Perhaps even stranger, I’m happy with the results.