Ontology is one of the key components of the semantic webs. Because it contains the core knowledge for an effective search, it requires carefully-collected knowledge which is domain-sensitive. 7th Space Interactive brought this interesting information to us in their article, “Ontology construction and application in practice case study of health tourism in Thailand.”
The METHONTOLOGY approach is often used to develop an ontology. It consists of phases: information gathering, corpus study, ontology engineering, evaluation, publishing and application construction. These stages are similar to the development of a taxonomy, but there are differences. Even those deep in the business of information management often have a problem understanding the difference between ontologies and taxonomies.
An ontology is “a collection of various taxonomies that can be used to describe a domain of knowledge along with the relationships among them.”
We know an ontology specializes in relationships and all that comes with them. Taxonomy identifies relationships between items and categories, but lacks the complexity that ontology provides.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
