Change: Ontologies

created on Feb. 10, 2013, 2:02 a.m. by Hevok & updated on March 18, 2013, 7:13 p.m. by Hevok

Ontology in a philosophical Context is Study of the Nature of Being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic Categories of being and their Relations.

Ontology is singular because it is a study. In Computer Science the Term refers to Knowledge Representation. Therefore, there can be more than one Ontology and thus it can be plural, hence there are Ontologies.

In an Information Technology Context an Ontology is a Model for describing the World that consists of a set of Types, Properties, and Relationship Types.

Ontologies are explicit formal Specifications of the Terms in the Domain and Relations among them [Gruber 1993].

For the Semantic Web and Linked Data the Models are based on the use of RDF, RDFS, and OWL which are used to describe the Types, Properties, and Relationship Types.

Ontologies are also commonly known as RDF "Vocabolaries".

Ontology are Collections of Informations. The term Ontology is co-opted by Artificial Intelligence and Web Researchers, in which an Ontology is a Document or File that formally defines the Relations among Terms. The most typical kind of Ontology for the Web has a Taxonomy and a set of Inference Rules.

References

Gruber, T.R. (1993). A Translation Approach to Portable Ontology Specification. Knowledge Acquisition 5: 199-220.

Ontologies.png

Categories: Concept
Parent: Semantic

Comment: Added ontology definition.

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