Chapter 12. Ontologies: RDF Business Models
Since the focus of
this book is more on the practical usage of RDF than the more
theoretical Semantic Web, I wasn't sure about
covering ontologies. After all, in a white paper
at Stanford University, Tom Gruber
described ontology thus:
An ontology is a specification of a conceptualization.
It's a bit difficult to determine how to incorporate
a discussion of a concept based on such an elusive definition into a
book that begins with Practical. However,
looking at examples of ontologies, in particular OIL, DAML+OIL, and
the W3C's current OWL (Web Ontology Language)
effort, it seemed to me that ontologies do fit into a book with
Practical in the title, because an ontology is
really the definition of the business rules associated with a
vocabulary. In other words: ontologies are
business models.
According to the Web Ontology Language (OWL) Use Cases and
Requirements document:
An ontology formally defines a common set of terms that are used to
describe and represent a domain. Ontologies can be used by automated
tools to power advanced services such as more accurate Web search,
intelligent software agents and knowledge management
Following on the relational model analogy discussed in earlier
chapters, if RDF is analogous to the relational data model and SQL is
analogous to RDF/XML, then ontologies built on RDF/XML are equivalent
to large architected business applications such as SAP, PeopleSoft,
and Oracle's Financial and Warehouse applications.
This equation definitely opened a home for ontologies in this book,
and this chapter is it.
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