Now I have never been good at expressing things that get under my skin, so if this seems awkward, so be it.

There was once a man who helped invent the modern day database.  In doing so he gave me a career in computers that has changed my life, and countless others.  I have had a couple of meetings with Jim and was always in awe of the thoughts and processing that went on in his mind.  He could stretch from super computing problems to how data should be made more useable in small businesses.  In the one day we spoke about the complete database needs of the UK for all health matters - diagnosis through to information sharing and then discussed how data should be shared and sliced in a 6 man business - and he still ran rings around me, even though 8 years ago I was designing and benchmarking databases up to 170TB and I have been focusing deeply on small business needs for the last four.

If you don't know about Jim, have a look at 426 documents that reference him in the acedemic search or read what he was looking at on his site (Jim Gray, Microsoft Research Home Page) and you will realise that muchof your IT life has been touched by him.

Recently he went to sea on a personal trip and did not return.  However, such is his impact on people that the boundaries of traditionally competing organisations did not stop the sharing of information in the effort to find him.

Jim helped build the map searching tools we all use now, so both Microsoft and Google brought their communities to bear on examining the raw satellite images in an attempt to find his craft.  Several research and prototype search tools were used in an attempt to find his boat, or its remains.  Not all searches were electronic - some people hand examined unprocessed images for hours on end.

Volunteers flew sorties to attempt an extensive search by air

NASA allowed one of its "non-military" spy planes to be used to continue the search

There are so many stories of how people from all over have helped to try to find this man it is touching to know as a community that we do have this in us.  For this reason I was saddened to see today that the search (on water and in the air) has been called of - http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/16732358.htm.  It is also amazing that this man provoked a response that was described by the a veteran of the US Coast Guard as "the largest strictly civilian, privately sponsored search effort I have ever seen".

While Microsoft has offically commented that it is too soon to hold a memorial, my thoughts go out to his family, who no matter what the outcome must be going through the worst time imaginable.