  In and of itself, data storage has apparent business utility. But when we can
convert data to information, the utility of stored data increases dramatically.
It is the layering of relation atop the data mass that is the engine for such
conversion. Frank relation amongst discrete objects sporadically ingested is
rare, making the process of synthesizing such relation all the more
challenging, but the challenge must be met if we are ever to see an equivalent
business value for unstructured data as we already have with structured data.
This paper describes a novel construct, referred to as a relational distributed
object store (RDOS), that seeks to solve the twin problems of how to
persistently and reliably store petabytes of unstructured data while
simultaneously creating and persisting relations amongst billions of objects.
