What is an ontology, in the context of computing?
Although the concept of ontology has been around for a long time in philosophy, in recent years it has become known in the computer world as a machine-readable vocabulary that is specified with enough precision to allow differing terms to be precisely related. More precisely, the operational definition of an ontology from the OWL Requirements Document is as follows: “An ontology defines the terms used to describe and represent an area of knowledge.” Ontologies are used by people, databases, and applications that need to share domain information (a domain is merely a specific subject area or area of knowledge, such as petroleum, medicine, tool manufacturing, real estate, automobile repair, financial management, etc.). Ontologies include computer-usable definitions of basic concepts in the domain and the relationships among them. They encode knowledge in a domain and also knowledge that spans domains. In this way, they make that knowledge reusable.
