I can't remember it exactly (otherwise I wouldn't have been asking my question now) how the construction is, but I will try:

It is a construction that makes some parallelism (in terms of relations between two things) between two groups of things..

Example:

MS Windows - MS Office and Linux - Openoffice

"MS office is (to) MS windows what (openoffice) is (to) Linux"????

Another example:

(Assume) The sun means "life" to us.
Poetry means "life" to a poet"

("Life"="Life")

"The sun is to us what the poetry is to a poet"???
How can you express this relation between the two groups (the sun-us(we) and the poetry-a poet) without using the word "life"?

Have you been nippin at the bottle there highness...or do I need to nip at it to understand what you are talkin about??

Sorry, I couldn't express what I really want to ask for I can't remember the construction in question. It is a pattern construction.

Plase look at the following examples and notice the (logical) relations betwen them:

The world-the moon and Jupiter-Amalthea(a satellite of Jupiter) ("satellite")

The USA - Dollar and Great Britain - Sterlin ("currency/money")

How can you express all these relations between the groups in one sentence without using the words "satellite" and "currency/money" ?

Or let me put it this way,

Suppose I want to say the following:

"Dollar is the currency of the USA and Sterlin, of GB."

But supppose I mustn't use the word "currency"; in this case, how can I state the above sentence "Dollar is the currency of the USA and Sterlin, of GB"?

I'm sure you explained it quite well with your first post...I didn't understand but I am sure someone smarter than I will be able to respond to you.

Ouh pagliaccio I am not sure either quite what expression you are seeking.

The way we would normally write such a thing would be much the same as one of your examples, i.e.:

The dollar is to USA what sterling is to UK.

This is the only way of expressing this comparison that I am aware of