Tuples and Attributes

For those of you wondering about why this blog is called what it is, here’s a definition from Techopedia: “In the context of relational databases, a tuple is one record (one row). The information in a database can be thought of as a spreadsheet, with columns (known as fields or attributes) representing different categories of information, and tuples (rows) representing all the information from each field associated with a single record.”

I was teaching database theory many years ago and had just rescued a dog from the shelter. I was trying out various names for her: Chip, Byte, etc. and thought that “Tuple” would roll off the tongue nicely and was almost guaranteed to be unique. Tuple was with me from 6 months old to 17 years old.

When it came to choosing a name for this blog, I thought back to Tuple and figured “tupleandattributes” was likely to be free for a domain name. And so it was!

Here’s Tuple:

Amazing how pets take over your heart. Tuple’s been gone for seven years now and yet I’ve started crying as I type this.

Her ashes are in a box with my dad’s and he would have approved; he, too, loved her with all his heart. As my dad was weakening, I would take Tuple with me over to the nursing home and she would put her paws up on his bed so he could pet her.

On the day before he died, I left her home as I knew he was very weak and fading in and out. The very last words my dad spoke to me when I walked in were “Where’s Tuple?” And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.