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An
ontology defines the terms used to describe and represent an area
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of
knowledge.
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Ontologies
are used by people, databases, and applications that need to
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share
domain information (a domain is just a specific subject area or
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area
of knowledge, like medicine, tool manufacturing, real estate,
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automobile
repair, financial management, etc.).
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Ontologies
include computer-usable definitions of basic concepts in
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the
domain and the relationships among them … They encode
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knowledge
in a domain and also knowledge that spans domains. In this
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way,
they make that knowledge reusable.
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The
word ontology has been used to describe artifacts with different
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degrees
of structure. These range from simple taxonomies (such as the
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Yahoo
hierarchy), to metadata schemes (such as the Dublin Core), to
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logical
theories. The Semantic Web needs ontologies with a significant
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degree
of structure.
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