Bobbin, (01)
A 'data dictionary' may also contain relationships, at least per ANSI
X3.?(138?), sometime in the late 1980s. The problem is that the formal
description of the relationships is essentially structural. The intention of
the structural relationships is carried, if at all, in the accompanying text. (02)
A 'thesaurus' is a about the relationships between words, as they relate to
concepts. And it typically limits the modeled relationships to a set of
high-level abstractions, precisely because the properties are designed to work
over broad categories in the scope of a (usually) natural language. A
domain-specific thesaurus may well be an 'ontology' in spirit, but it probably
lacks the formal language to ensure unambiguous interpretations. (Thesauri
tend to talk about distinctions in common usage, rather than explicit
distinctions in intention.) (03)
Information models and ontologies allow you to formally specify properties per
se: Verbs that denote semantic relationships. They are like thesauri, but
formal and specific to a problem space. (04)
The difference between an information model and an 'ontology' is this:
- an information model tells you for a given entity/class what relationships
can and/or must exist. That is, it describes necessary and optional
properties. Every person has an age.
- an ontology should tell you (where possible) what the sufficient conditions
for a given entity type/class are: Every person whose age is less than 16 is a
child. (05)
Information models provide enough elements to capture the relevant information
about individual things in specified categories. Ontologies enable you to use
captured information to infer membership in unspecified categories (and other
unstated properties). That said, many 'ontologies' don't seem to have been
made for the latter purpose; they are just information models, and a lot of
'data logic' languages are about adding inferencing rules to information models
(and their implementation counterpart -- data schemas). (06)
Additional note: A proper taxonomy (a la Linnaeus) specifies at each level of
decomposition the definitive properties for the subtypes: A mammal is a
vertebrate that ... That is an ontology in the sense that it enables
categorizations to be inferred from stated properties of an individual. But a
lot of would-be formal taxonomies only specify the subtype relationships
formally, and carry the property axioms only in unstructured text (annotations). (07)
The problem with this whole exercise is that these terms have come from
different disciplines and have broader and narrower meanings in certain
communities. Put another way, we will not be able to capture 'what (arbitrary)
people mean by X'. The best we can do is 'what WE agree to mean by X'. (08)
Best,
-Ed (09)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bobbin Teegarden
> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 3:23 PM
> To: '[ontolog-forum] '
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What the difference re., Data Dictionary,
> Ontology, and Vocabulary?
>
> I would say that an Ontology is [IMHO] more than just a Data Dictionary,
> because it contains also (kinds of) relationships. To me an Ontology is
> conceptually more of a Thesaurus. Does that work?
>
> Bobbin Teegarden
> CTO/Chief Architect, OntoAge
> h/o 425.378.0131
> cell 206.979.0196
> teegs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kingsley
> Idehen
> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 12:01 PM
> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What the difference re., Data Dictionary,
> Ontology, and Vocabulary?
>
> On 2/14/14 10:09 AM, David Eddy wrote:
> > Totally aside from the fact that the central data dictionary simply
> > doesn't exist anymore in any commercial sense, organizations are far
> > too distributed today. If there is a distributed data dictionary,
> > please speak up.
>
> That's what you get when you incorporate Linked Data principles into
> Ontology design.
>
> An Ontology is (IMHO) very much a kind of Data Dictionary. I wait to be
> convinced otherwise.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Regards,
>
> Kingsley Idehen
> Founder & CEO
> OpenLink Software
> Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
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>
>
>
>
>
>
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