I Howley at 17:39, 15 September 2006

2006-09-15T17:39:03Z

W Regli at 19:40, 25 July 2006

2006-07-25T19:40:43Z

W Regli at 19:28, 25 July 2006

2006-07-25T19:28:34Z

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<span style="color:red">What is an ontology? What is an upper ontology? Current status of upper ontology? What are some other ontologies around?</span>

An ontology is basically a dictionary for a specific domain, except instead of simply defining terms it defines relationships between the terms and attributes of the terms. [http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/ontol.html AAAI's Ontologies Subtopic] has a wonderful explanation of ontology.

An upper ontology attempts to describe concepts that are not specific to any domain by using a hierarchy of entities and rules to unify all domains (without tailoring to a specific one). Determining which items should "exist" in an upper ontology and which shouldn't has become a philosophical argument, dividing the effort and preventing the acceptance of a single upper ontology for all purposes. [http://suo.ieee.org/ IEEE's Standard Upper Ontology working group] attempts to standardize the effort with its collection of upper ontologies. The first page of [http://www.mel.nist.gov/msid/watershed_article.pdf What is an Upper Ontology?] explains the upper ontology concept further.

The Semantic Web relies upon independently created ontologies to unite terms and concepts across the internet. This way, two independently created pieces of software can communicate, so long as they share common ontologies. For example, when [[OWL]] is used to construct a simple <tt>SnakeRobot</tt> class, it should take advantage of pre-existing robot ontologies much like this:

<code><owl:Class rdf:ID="SnakeRobot">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="http://www.cyc.com/2004/06/04/cyc#Robot" />
</owl:Class></code>

<span style="color:red">Use above example in a descriptive example/situation</span>

The <tt>Robot</tt> term from the [[Cyc]] ontology is used in this example, but there are many other [[RDF]] and [[OWL]] ontologies available in [http://www.schemaweb.info/ SchemaWeb], the [http://www.daml.org/ontologies/ DAML Ontology Library], and [http://protege.stanford.edu/plugins/owl/owl-library/index.html Protégé's Sample OWL Ontology list]. When searching for a specific term, [http://swoogle.umbc.edu/ Swoogle] is useful. Also, some of the more popular ontologies are described below.

If you're constructing a new ontology, you may wish to learn more about [[Ontology building tools]]

==See also==
* [[Friend of a Friend|(FoaF)]]
* [[Dublin Core|(Metadata Initiative)]]
* [[Wordnet]]
* [[IEEE Upper Ontology]]
* [[OpenCyc]]
* [http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/ontol.html AAAI Ontologies Section] Longer explanation of 'ontology'
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_computer_science Ontology on Wikipedia]
* [http://www.w3.org/TR/webont-req/#section-use-cases OWL Use Cases] OWL ontologies, with brief explanations
* [http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/ontol.html AAAI Ontologies Section]
* ''What is an Upper Ontology? - And what do you do at the Summit?'' by R. Brooks [http://www.mel.nist.gov/msid/watershed_article.pdf Available from NIST]
* [http://www.schemaweb.info/ SchemaWeb] An RDF schemas directory
* [http://www.daml.org/ontologies/ DAML Ontology Library] A categorized list of some existing ontologies
* [http://protege.stanford.edu/plugins/owl/owl-library/index.html Protégé's Sample OWL Ontology list] Another list of various ontologies
* [http://swoogle.umbc.edu/ Swoogle] A Semantic Web Search Engine- good for finding pre-defined Classes and ontologies

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	<span style="color:red">What is an ontology? What is an upper ontology? Current status of upper ontology? What are some other ontologies around?</span>		<span style="color:red">What is an ontology? What is an upper ontology? Current status of upper ontology? What are some other ontologies around?</span>

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 ==See also==
-* [[Friend of a Friend|(FoaF)]]
+* [[Friend of a Friend|Friend of a Friend (FoaF)]]
-* [[Dublin Core|(Metadata Initiative)]]
+* [[Dublin Core|Dublin Core (Metadata Initiative)]]
 * [[Wordnet]]
 * [[IEEE Upper Ontology]]

Ontologies - Revision history

I Howley at 17:39, 15 September 2006

W Regli at 19:40, 25 July 2006

W Regli at 19:28, 25 July 2006