Decades, Planets and Marriage

Google ontologist, Denny Vrandečić started a vigorous thread on the question of what constitutes a decade. See for example, the article: “People Can’t Even Agree On When The Decade Ends”. This, is a re-emergence of the question from 20 years ago on whether the new...

When is a Brick not a Brick?

They say good things come in threes and my journey to data-centricity started with three revelations. The first was connected to a project I was working on for a university college with a problem that might sound familiar to some of you. The department I worked in was...

Toss Out Metadata That Does Not Bring Joy

As I write this, I can almost hear you wail “No, no, we don’t have too much metadata, we don’t have nearly enough!  We have several projects in flight to expand our use of metadata.” Sorry, I’m going to have to disagree with you there.  You are on a fool’s errand that...