How is taxonomy different from ontology or thesaurus?
Although they have different meanings, these terms are all used very loosely and often interchangeably in the structured vocabulary world. To clarify things, here are the strict meanings of each: • Taxonomy – Set of categories or terms organized into a hierarchy with parent child relationships and implied inheritance. Meaning, a child term (ie; Dog) has all of the characteristics of its parent term (ie; Mammal). A taxonomy only contains broader and narrower relationships • Thesaurus – A set of categories or terms organized into a hierarchy like a taxonomy but also including additional relationship types such as synonymous terms and related terms. For example, Memory Card may be related to Digital Camera. These terms do not have a traditional broader or narrower term relationship, but it may be desirable to associate the terms to help make information more accessible for a user. Synonyms help account for different ways of expressing the same concept. For example, Laptop Computer is the
