I dream of tuples

I had the formal methods post mostly written out yesterday. I just didn’t have time to post it…so today is a rare double-post Friday.

I woke up this morning with a vivid memory of the dream I was busy dreaming before the alarm went off and called me back to the confusing morasses that is the weekday morning. I was dreaming about databases. It’s always a depressing prospect when your work/school concerns bleed into your unconscious dream time. However the recollections of the bizarre dream were kind of interesting when examined with a conscious mind.

I know some people dream grand coherent stories. I think the stuff of Dawn’s dreams would make for some truly interesting fantasy/fiction. I hardly ever remember what I dream at night….and when I do remember snippets of them they hardly ever make any sense. As best as I can tell I like to synthesize random bits from here and there with no underlying coherent connection. I’ve always found it odd that in the dream it makes perfect sense but in the light of day is a shambling heap of confusion - my dreams require a giant heaping helping of suspension of logic and cause and effect.

In this morning’s dream I was desperately trying to insert data into a database. The database in question was our neighbor’s house. In the dream their physical house was a database, and our house was a house we lived in right next door. This seemed normal and correct and need not be questioned. Evidently in dream-world some houses are abodes and some houses are databases. We had information we needed to insert into the database that was the neighbor’s house…but it was made of bricks and all the windows were closed and the doors were locked so we couldn’t enter the data. It was distressing.

Fortunately something had punched a hole in their roof. It looked like a meteor or something had crashed through the roof and punched an approximately a two-foot hole in the roof. I saw this as a chink in the database-house’s security. My plan was simple. The roof had a slope to it – if I threw the tuples up on the roof they would probably roll back down and into the hole….and the data would be entered into the database! So I started to lob tuples up onto the roof and enter the data. Then the alarm rang. I wish I could remember what a tuple looked liked….but that detail of the dream is lost.

I’m pleased with the strange surreal-ness of the dream. And I’m glad I was dreaming about databases instead of formal methods. I doubt any formal methods dream have happy endings.