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(last edited March 14, 2007) Front Page | Recent Changes | Title Index | User Preferences | Random Page | HelpPeople use the word ontology to mean different things, e.g. glossaries & data dictionaries, thesauri & taxonomies, schemas & data models, and formal ontologies & inference. A formal ontology is a controlled vocabulary expressed in an ontology representation language.
This language has a grammar for using vocabulary terms to express something meaningful within a specified domain of interest. The grammar contains formal constraints (e.g., specifies what it means to be a well-formed statement, assertion, query, etc.) on how terms in the ontol-ogy's controlled vocabulary can be used together.
People make commitments to use a specific controlled vocabulary or ontology for a domain of interest. Enforcement of an ontology's grammar may be rigorous or lax. Frequently, the grammar for a "light-weight" ontology is not completely specified, i.e., it has implicit rules that are not explicitly documented.
