What Is An Ontology? Broaden your Knowledge

[tillo 0]

looked it up at wikipedia:

In Information Science, an ontology is the product of an attempt to formulate an exhaustive and rigorous conceptual schema about a domain. This domain does not have to be the complete knowledge of that topic, but purely a domain of interest decided upon by the creator of the ontology.
An ontology is typically a hierarchical data structure containing all the relevant entities and their relationships and rules within that domain (e.g., a domain ontology). However, computational ontology does not have to be hierarchical at all. The computer science usage of the term ontology is derived from the much older usage of the term ontology in philosophy.

An ontology which is not tied to a particular problem domain but attempts to describe general entities is known as a foundation ontology or upper ontology. Typically, more specialized domain specific schemata must be created to make the data useful for real world decisions.

Ontologies are used in Artificial Intelligence systems and Expert Systems. Expert systems are programs that analyze information about specific problems and are made up of a set of rules. Expert systems are for instance used by helpdesk problem classifications and determination.

A free ontology editor and knowledge acquisition system is Protege Protege a free ontology system

[melicaster 0]

A domain ontology is an ontology tied to a specific domain. A foundation ontology is a form of ontology that tries to be less specific, and in that way more generally applicable. It contains a core glossary in whose terms everything else in a broad domain can and must be described. An example is the 2000 words of English required by Longman's dictionary, used to define the 4000 most common English idioms. A foundation ontology in computer science would serve as core ontology for both computer programs and users, influencing their view of data and events.
A computer science example is that, by default, all computer programs have a foundation ontology consisting of a processor instruction set, standard library in a programming language, files in accessible file systems, or some other list of 'what exists'. Because these may be poor representations for certain problem domains, more specialized schema must be created to make the data useful in making real world decisions. Thus the need for standards which take 'core' ontologies (e.g. the Dublin Core in SGML) and solidify them into 'foundations'.

Tom R. Gruber and R. Studer have described an ontology in this sense as "an explicit and formal specification of a conceptualization" .

Notice from BuffaloHELP:

When you copy from any source, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(computer_science) , you must use QUOTE tags.

Edited January 22, 2006 by BuffaloHELP (see edit history)

[unicornrose 0]

Could some one explain this better? For some reason its not clicking with me. I think I sort of get the concept. Kind of like clustering information into differant groups?

[lodd 0]

I'm getting the idea that ontologies mean a huge database of information that's been assorted into different groups. I get the visual pictureof a directory listing (i.e. http://www.dmoz.org/) where you arrange websites for example into directories and into certain groups into an organized and heirarchical manner. This, ideally, should allow a user to arrange, compile and find back the data that he wants and needs.This is a classical way of arranging data. Nowadays, with fast searching technology, i'm more in avour of a flat-style database. This means a single folder with everything inside it. This database can then be searched using relevant terms so that you can get different results everytime you launch a different search. This eliminates having to look through many folders before you come to the one that you want and also eliminates redundancies.What are redundancies? Well, imagine if your file fits two categories. Do you put them in both? If you do, then the second file is redundant because it takes up and wastes space. With a flat database design, you eliminate any and all redundancies.So, flat dtabase over ontologies? I think so.

[hellRAISER666 0]

After reading all that. I still don't get what "ontologies" means. Do you think you can give me the main concept of "ontologies"?

[triple6fistdestructionsoulhammer 0]

Ontology in philosophical terms is the study of existance or being. It simply brings up the questions; what exists, what does it mean to exist, how do we know we exist, thoughts of that nature. Now in the terms defined above...I know nothing.