What are ontologies in the Semantic Web context?
Ontologies define the concepts and relationships used to describe and represent an area of knowledge. Ontologies are used to classify the terms used in a particular application, characterize possible relationships, and define possible constraints on using those relationships. In practice, ontologies can be very complex (with several thousands of terms) or very simple (describing one or two concepts only). An example for the role of ontologies or rules on the Semantic Web is to help data integration when, for example, ambiguities may exist on the terms used in the different data sets, or when a bit of extra knowledge may lead to the discovery of new relationships. A general example may help. A bookseller may want to integrate data coming from different publishers. The data can be imported into a common RDF model, eg, by using converters to the publishers’ databases. However, one database may use the term “author”, whereas the other may use the term “creator”. To make the integration com
Ontologies define the concepts and relationships used to describe and represent an area of knowledge. Ontologies are used to classify the terms used in a particular application, characterize possible relationships, and define possible constraints on using those relationships. In practice, ontologies can be very complex (with several thousands of terms) or very simple (describing one or two concepts only). An example for the role of ontologies or rules on the Semantic Web is to help data integration when, for example, ambiguities may exist on the terms used in the different data sets, or when a bit of extra knowledge may lead to the discovery of new relationships. A general example may help. A bookseller may want to integrate data coming from different publishers. The data can be imported into a common RDF model, eg, by using converters to the publishers’ databases. However, one database may use the term “author”, whereas the other may use the term “creator”. To make the integration com
