Got back to my reading pile today which I haven't touched in some time. The founder of Lazy software, Simon Williams, has developed a different approach to storing information and the relationship between each element in a database. It is called the Associate Model of Data, and forms the basis of a product his company offers.

The basic principle is to use a syntax based on the english language: subject-verb-object, e.g. the sky is coloured blue. Once this is stored, the associations between the data elements can be used to offer several advantages over the relational database model. More information can be seen in this pdf.