Ontologies, the study about the existence of things, use a shared vocabulary to describe components of a particular discipline and the relationships among these components. When it comes to computer science and the information sciences in general, an ontology describes a representation of something. This interesting topic came to us from Toolbox in their article, “Does metadata matter?”
Because systems bring data from disparate sources they often benefit from ontological metadata which helps to interconnect the semantics of the diverse data. Of course, consistency can also be provided through classification and taxonomies.
Think of an ontology as something that looks at a bigger picture in describing something and the things around it. In the world of data management the use of ontologies would be applied to try and clarify an understanding of the nature and characteristics of given data. A data ontology is about formal naming of items and defining groupings or categories, establishing properties and describing relationships between data and entities.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
