Change - Ontologies

Created on Feb. 10, 2013, 2:02 a.m. by Hevok & updated on March 18, 2013, 7:28 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. ¶
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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. ¶
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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. ¶
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Ontologies are explicit formal Specifications of the Terms in the Domain and Relations among them [Gruber 1993]. ¶
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Ontologies on the Web range from large Taxonomies categorizing Web Sites to Categorization of single Entities and their Features. ¶
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A single Ontology defines a common Vocabulary for Researchers who need to share Information in a Domain. It includes machine-interpretable Definitions of basic Concepts in the Domain and Relations among them. ¶
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The development of an Ontology allows to: ¶
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share common Understanding of the structure of Information among Software Agents ¶
Enable reuse of Domain Knowledge ¶
Make Domain Assumptions explicit ¶
Separate Domain Knowledge from the operational Knowledge ¶
* Analyze Domain Knowledge ¶
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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. ¶
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Ontologies are also commonly known as RDF "Vocabolaries". ¶
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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. ¶
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References ¶
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Gruber, T.R. (1993). A Translation Approach to Portable Ontology Specification. Knowledge Acquisition 5: 199-220.