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| Ontologies |
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In philosophy, ontology is a theory about the nature of existence. The word ontology stems from the Greek language, meaning the study of being. It is the fundamental interpretation of the ultimate constituents of the world of experience. Computer science researchers have co-opted the term for computer science, whereby an ontology is a machine-readable dictionary that formally defines relations among terms. An ontology is a model of the products, materials, documents and other entities about which the data is making statements. An ontological model can therefore serve as a rich dictionary or thesaurus which is able to link data structures - whatever their source or format, by means of a common model. It is thus a powerful tool which allows a formal description of semantics - the meaning of the data. Ontologies are becoming increasingly popular in the enterprise by virtue of what they promise to deliver: a shared and common description of data that is not dependent on the particular context of a data source, and can be freely communicated between application systems, information systems, and people. Ontologies will enable the second generation of e-commerce and knowledge management tools, and will shape the future of the Semantic Web. In adopting an ontological model, enterprises can seamlessly map between the hundreds of different data formats they have. According to Gartner Research, “The objective of an ontology is to provide a formal specification of part of the real world… Ontology-based techniques are beginning to provide the structure to realize effective application discovery, maturing to yield tool and methodology frameworks that can support end users … the ontology can provide design and integration time coherence.” ("Semantic Web Technologies Take Middleware to Next Level," by Jim Jacobs and Alexander Linden, August 2002, used with permission, emphasis added) |