Ontology definition

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Hi team,



here is the definition of an ontology that I use when I teach. It is my definition, so you are free to blame me. :-) This is from the following reference:




J. Strassner, “
Knowledge Engineering Using Ontologies
”, Handbook of Network and System Administration, edited by J. Bergstra and M. Burgess, Chapter 3, Section 4, pages 425-457, ISBN 9780444521989




An ontology is a formal, explicit specification of a shared, machine-readable vocabulary and meanings, in the form of various entities and relationships between them, to describe knowledge about the contents of one or more related subject domains throughout the life cycle of its existence. These entities and relationships are used to represent knowledge in the set of related subject domains. Formal refers to the fact that the ontology should be representable in a formal grammar. Explicit means that the entities and relationships used, and the constraints on their use, are precisely and unambiguously defined in a declarative language suitable for knowledge representation. Shared means that all users of an ontology will represent a concept using the same or equivalent set of entities and relationships. Subject domain refers to the content of the universe of discourse being represented by the ontology.


Ontologies can be combined or related to each other using ontological commitments as follows:


An ontology commitment represents a selection of the best mapping between the terms in an ontology and their meanings. Hence, ontologies can be combined and/or related to each other by defining a set of mappings that define precisely and unambiguously how one node in one ontology is related to another node in another ontology.







regards,