Out of Taxonomies so you can Ontologies: Designed and you will Semantic Dating

From the example over, the following band of relationships are customized, because they’re designated by the ontologist to the brand of case

At this year’s Taxonomy Bootcamp conference, I was enjoy to provide toward committee offering 5-time “Pecha Kucha” lightning conversations, for which the 2009 motif was ontology. Just as there are some other understandings and uses out of “taxonomy,” so there are some other understandings and you may usages from “ontology.” You could arrive at if the out-of more bases. For people who arrived at ontologies on the exposure to taxonomies and the realm of recommendations administration, next, most merely, an ontology is actually a very complex type of taxonomy with which has wealthier advice.

Inside my brief presentation, “Regarding Unintentional Taxonomist so you’re able to Accidental Ontologist,” I summed up the difference between taxonomies and you may ontologies below:

1. Relationships: Taxonomies enjoys hierarchical and sometimes an easy “relevant identity” associative, however, ontologies possess semantic relationship, which happen to be custom-authored.
2. Term Services: Taxonomies essentially do not have label characteristics, however, ontologies would.
3. Name Kinds: Taxonomies basically don’t have classes to own conditions, if you don’t imagine elements because classes, but ontologies do.
4. Guidelines/Standards: Taxonomies is always to stick to the ANSI/NISO Z (2005) otherwise ISO 25964, while ontologies are needed to follow along with the net Ontology Language (OWL) recommendations and use the brand new Investment Dysfunction Construction (RDF).
5. Purposes: Taxonomies help indexing/tagging, categorization, and/otherwise group away from blogs, and as a result guidance findability and you will retrieval. The key purpose of a keen ontology would be to determine a domain of knowledge, and you can support from indexing/marking, categorization, category, findability, and you will recovery are going to be additional.
6. Tools: Particular software supports the production of only taxonomies, particular application is to have ontologies, and lots of application does one another quite well. At exactly the same time, specific taxonomy/thesaurus app normally service very, if not completely, features of ontologies.

Whenever you can customize the relationships, performs this change a good taxonomy into the good ontology? No. Designed dating are just one to function of a keen ontology, although perhaps the essential feature. During my on the web movement on taxonomies, even in the event Really don’t show how to come up with ontologies, I actually do render a training into designed/semantic relationships. It was preferred by manage a more cutting-edge taxonomy instead of always conference all standards from a keen ontology.

The common RT matchmaking, but not, try singularly bidirectional

Furthermore, a customized relationships may possibly not be fully semantic. The relationships also are “semantic” as they consist of certain meaning. (Semantic means “has actually meaning.”) You can easily tailor relationships while you are nonetheless not making them fully semantic. Your age the product quality dating to suit your variety of app and you may audience. Including, you could potentially rename greater identity (BT)/narrower title (NT) given that “ parent/son ,” or rename Relevant Identity given that “ come across and additionally .” Should your taxonomy/thesaurus application is more sophisticated, it can enables you to specify any number of designed relationships, which means that contain significantly more subtleties out of definition.

An extremely important component out-of really semantic dating affirmed in the ontologies luxy is the ability to do directional relationships that will be collection of within the for every recommendations, with reciprocity. Most of these semantic relationships might be variations out-of “ associated title ” (RT), in the place of alternatives of the hierarchical dating. For people who simply designed they of the renaming they, it can have to be an equivalent in rules, such as possess “ possess mate .” In order to make a great semantic relationships couple, eg Man ( produces ) and you may IND ( developed by the industry ), you want a tool one supports ontological dating and not just “customized” dating.

In case the product aids designed relationships however the capability to perform type of sets out-of directional matchmaking that will be associative in place of hierarchical, the results containers be very helpful. You have got a great “near ontology” otherwise a solely laid out ontology. Such as for example, you could rename this new singular “ related term ” (RT) since the “ Manufacturer-Produc t” having an acronym like Man-Specialist (Borrowing from the bank so you’re able to Alice Redmond-Neal out-of Accessibility Inple). Ergo, the partnership is the identical in a choice of guidance: