What is Ontology

High-level knowledge and data representation structure. Ontologies provide a formal frame to represent the knowledge related with a complex domain, as a qualitative model of the system. Ontologies can be used to represent the structure of a domain by means of defining concepts and properties that relate them.

High-level knowledge and data representation structure. Ontologies provide a formal frame to represent the knowledge related with a complex domain, as a qualitative model of the system. Ontologies can be used to represent the structure of a domain by means of defining concepts and properties that relate them.

Information sharing among supply chain business partners using information systems is an important enabler for supply chain management. There are diverse types of data to be shared across supply chain, namely – order, inventory, shipment , and customer service . Consequently, information about these issues needs to be shared in order to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in supply chain management. In this way, information-sharing activities require that human and / or machine agents agree on common and explicit business-related concepts (the shared conceptualization among hardware / software agents customers, and service providers) are known as explicit ontologies; and this help to exchange data and derived knowledge out of the data to achieve collaborative goals of business operations.

a collection of classes that represent related concepts. Ontology is organized using a hierarchy and a set of relationships between its classes.

An explicit specification of a conceptualization, in which a set of objects is described through relationships among them to form the universe of discourse.

Method of formally representing knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and the relationships which hold between them.

The word ontology is of a Greek origin. In computer science, an ontology is a structured set of concepts that makes sense of information.

Those things that exist are those things that have a formal representation within the context of a machine. Knowledge commits to an ontology if it adheres to the structure, vocabulary and semantics intrinsic to a particular ontology i.e. it conforms to the ontology definition. A formal ontology in computer science is a logical theory that represents a conceptualization of real world concepts.

Set of classes, relations, functions, etc. that represents knowledge of a particular domain

Knowledge codified by providing a simplified and explicit specification of a phenomenon that one desires to represent ( Gruber, 1995 ; Noy & McGuinness, 2001 ; Staab et al., 2001 ).

a structured set of terms and concepts that illustrate the meaning of an information field.

Information sharing among supply chain business partners using information system is an important enabler for supply chain management. There are different types of data to be shared across the supply chain, namely – order, demand, inventory, shipment, and customer service. Consequently, information about these issues needs to be shared in order to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in supply chain management. In this way, information-sharing activities require that human and/or machine agents agree on common and explicit business-related concepts (the shared conceptualizations among hardware/software agents, customers, and service providers) are known as explicit ontologies; and these help to exchange data and derived knowledge out of the data to achieve collaborative goals of business operations.

A data model that represents the entities that are defined and evaluated by its own attributes, and organized according to a hierarchy and a semantic. Ontologies are used for representing knowledge on the whole of a specific domain or on of it. In WSNs, ontologies are included in software architectures as a way of facilitating the search for relevant information. For example, in a BSN an ontology could be used for sensing a specific context (context awareess).

A set of concepts such as things, events, and relations, which are specified in a representative way in order to create an agreed-upon vocabulary for exchanging information. Ontology is the specification of conceptualizations, working model of entities, and interactions used to help programs and humans share knowledge in a specific domain such as electronic commerce, planning activity, etc.

(a) In computer science and information science, an ontology formally represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and the relationships between pairs of concepts. It can be used to model a domain and support reasoning about concepts. (b) In philosophy, ontology is the study of the nature of being, becoming, existence , or reality , as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.

Information sharing among supply chain business partners using information systems is an important enabler for supply chain management. There are diverse types of data to be shared across the supply chain, namely – order, inventory, shipment , and customer service . Consequently, information about these issues needs to be shared to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in supply chain management. In this way, information-sharing activities require that human and / or machine agents agree on common and explicit business-related concepts (the shared conceptualization among hardware / software-agents, customers, and service providers) are known as explicit ontologies; and this help to exchange data and derived knowledge out of the data to achieve collaborative goals of business operations.

In the context of knowledge management, ontology is referred as the shared understanding of some domains, which is often conceived as a set of entities, relations, axioms, facts and instances

The study and analysis of the state of being.

It is a formal representation of the concepts, entities, and their relation shared by several applications in a given domain.

A fundamental viewpoint that people hold related to the nature of reality.

A specification of a shared conceptualization using a formal language.

A specification of a shared conceptualization using a formal language.

An explicit formal specification of how to represent the objects, concepts, and entities existing in an area of interest, and the relationships among them.

a formal specification of a conceptualization, usually depicting a certain problem domain

Is defined as a specification of a conceptualisation that describes concepts and relationships used within a community.

Knowledge representation formalism, used for expressing explicit knowledge.

Information sharing among business partners using information system is an important enabler for business operations management. There are different types of data to be shared across business operations, namely – order, demand, inventory, shipment, and customer service. Consequently, information about these issues needs to be shared in order to achieve efficiency and effectiveness. In this way, information-sharing activities require that human and/or machine agents agree on common and explicit business related concepts (the shared conceptualizations among hardware/software agents, customers, and service providers) are known as explicit ontologies; and these help to exchange data and derived knowledge out of the data to achieve collaborative goals of business operations.

An ontology is a well-defined set of concepts that are ordered in some manner to create an agreed-upon vocabulary for exchanging information.

Ontology is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of existence and being.

Is a representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. In other words, an ontology defines the vocabulary of a domain.

An ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain. Ontologies are used as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it.

An ontology is an explicit and formal language specification of those linguistic means of expression which are considered necessary for the construction of representational models of a common conceptualization of real phenomena used by several agents. Thereby the conceptualization extends to these real phenomena which are regarded by the agents as observable or imaginable in the subject- and goal-dependent restricted real world situation and which are used or needed for the communication between the agents.

A formal and explicit specification of a shared conceptualization.

A formalization of the description of a domain knowledge at a conceptual level.

A domain specific formal machine-readable description of knowledge, based on the use of classes and proprieties extracted from vocabularies. Each ontology element must have an unique identifier.

Literature now generally agrees on the Gruber’s terms to define an ontology: explicit specification of a shared conceptualization of a domain. The domain is the world that the ontology describes. It can be a general domain or a more specific one. This description uses a vocabulary of concepts which is understandable and agreed by people of the domain; here is the meaning of “shared conceptualization”. The ontology can be implemented in several languages with a different level of formalization and expressivity, with no ambiguity that’s why ontology is an “explicit specification”.

An explicit specification of a conceptualization, formally describing the entities involved in a particular domain and the relationships among them.

It is a study of various objects, attributes and their relationships that exist in the domain of interests. Ontology can be considered as the representation and explicit conceptualization of vocabularies such as entities, sub-entities, relations and properties in a domain of interest. With the help of such a formal definition, it is possible to represent a situation in an efficient manner.

Explicit specification of conceptualization. The ontology is used to define the concepts, relationships and other distinctions that are relevant for modeling a domain.

Ontologies are reusable specifications used for describing relationships and properties of resources. OWL is a commonly used ontology representation technique.

An explicit specification of a shared conceptualization of some subject area or domain.

Is a vocabulary that contains the formal naming of concepts, and the definition of their types, properties, and interrelations. It enables a common interpretation of semantic metadata, which allows systems to understand the actual meaning and context of exchanged data.

In computer science, ontology is a formal representation of the knowledge by a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. The domain is the type of objects, and/or concepts that exist and their properties and relations. The creation of domain ontologies is the fundamental of the definition of any enterprise framework. Every information system has its own ontology. Software agents can communicate with each other via messages that contain expressions formulated in terms of an ontology. It is important to use an ontology for the connection with the user interface component. The user browses the ontology to better understand the vocabulary and to formulate queries at the desired level. Application programs containing a lot of domain knowledge may not explicitly store information in the database for various reasons. In this case, it is possible to constitute a knowledge base by an ontology.

A formal representation of a portion of reality, in terms of entities and relations between them.

An ontology is a formal, explicit specification of a domain. It deals with what can be rationally understood, at least partially. Typically, an ontology consists of concepts, concept properties, and relationships between concepts. In a typical ontology, concepts are represented by terms.

The study of the nature of being, reality, and substance.

A description of concepts and relationships between these concepts in an area of interest. Therefore, an ontology is the terminology used for a given domain of interest.

A domain vocabulary complete with a set of precise definitions, or axioms, that constrain the meanings of the terms sufficiently to enable consistent interpretation of the data that use that vocabulary.

A set of agreed rules, usually in the form of a common vocabulary and relationships, used to enable the transfer of data/information/knowledge between two or more agents.

A formal representation of entities described by their definitions and the relationships between their physical or conceptual contexts. There are two kinds of ‘property’ describing the latter: ‘data properties’, where the contents relate to other entities, and ‘object properties’, where the information refers directly to the entity being considered. The semantic framework may be expanded by other properties that express ‘rules’. These rules clarify the relationships between entities, and allow deductions to be inferred from the system, thus revealing potentially incoherent representations.

Theory of existence.

Structural model that represents concepts and relations of the concepts within a domain to reason about objects in the domain.

An ontology is an explicit and formal specification of a conceptualization. In general, an ontology describes formally a domain of discourse. Typically, an ontology consists of a finite list of terms and the relationships between these terms.

“An ontology is similar to a dictionary or glossary, but with greater detail and structure that enables computers to process its content. An ontology consists of a set of concepts, axioms, and relationships that describe a domain of interest” (SUOWG, 2009). An ontology can also be read by humans, who do not necessarily need to be computer specialists to interpret its meaning.

Representation of a problem domain using concepts, their properties, relations between concepts, and axioms expressing constraints.

The systematic description of a given phenomenon, which often includes a controlled vocabulary and relationships, captures nuances in meaning and enables knowledge sharing and reuse. Typically, ontology defines data entities, data attributes, relations and possible functions and operations.

The philosophical study of the nature of reality and being in the world.

The philosophical study of the nature of reality and being in the world.

An ontology specifies a conceptualization, that is, a structure of related concepts for a given domain.

A formally representation of knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and the relationships between those concepts.

The word ontology comes from the Greek ontos (being) and logia (written or spoken discourse). It is in use since Empedocles described the four elements – air, earth, fire, and water. In artificial intelligence, ontology is defined as a working model of concepts and interactions from a particular domain of knowledge, like medicine, mathematics, automobile repair, and so forth, which is used to easily describe the meaning of different contents that can be exchanged in information systems. Any ontology can be easily extended, refined, and reused by other ontologies, providing expressive representation for a wide diversity of real-world concepts.

It is a formal naming and definition of the types, properties, and interrelationships of the entities that really or fundamentally exist for a particular domain of discourse. It is thus a practical application of philosophical ontology, with a taxonomy.

Formal explicit specification of conceptualization, in a form of description of concepts and relations existing in a domain of interest, including restrictions, in form that allows automated processing including reasoning.

Based context model – representation of the situation (context) by means of ontology.

Ontology is defined as “(…) an explicit specification of a conceptualization” according to (Gruber, 1993) and describes basic terms and concepts within a certain domain as well as the relationship between those concepts.

Ontology describes the relationship between a concept and its attributes or entities.

Branch of philosophy concerned with theories of reality. Ontological assumptions or positions concern the essence of phenomena.

A specification of a conceptualization, which is the set of ideas, concepts, and relationships of a certain domain.

The set of the things that can be dealt with in a particular domain, together with their relationships.

As a means to conceptualise and structure knowledge, ontologies are seen as the key to realise the vision of the semantic web

Theory of existence.

The formal representation of knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships among those concepts (Malafsky & Newman, n.d.; Ontology, n.d.). Within the field of computational intelligence, it is used as input to reason or make inferences about the entities within that domain, as well as to describe the domain. Sub-concepts include syntax (the way words are put together to form a sentence), semantics (the meaning of al symbol or concept within a specific context), pragmatics (the implications of that information in context) and context (the set of circumstances or details that are relevant to a specific incident or event).

Is a description of concepts and relationships that can be used by people or software agents that want to share information within a domain. An ontology document defines the terms used to describe and represent a domain.

An ontology is a formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization. Conceptualization refers to an abstract model of some phenomenon in the world by having identified the relevant concepts of that phenomenon. Explicit means that the type of concepts used, and the constraints on their use are explicitly defined. Formal refers to the fact that the ontology should be machine-readable. Shared reflects the notion that an ontology captures consensual knowledge, that is, it is not private of some individual, but accepted by a group.

It is the philosophical study of being i.e., it talks about variables, their properties and the relations between them.

Formal specification of entities’ representation (as objects, concepts and so on), making possible to establish relationships among terms and attributes through the use of semantic approaches.

is a formal representation and shared conceptualization of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between the concepts. An ontology provides a shared vocabulary which can be used to model a domain.

An ontology is a specification of a conceptualisation of a knowledge domain. An ontology is also a vocabulary that describes objects and the relations between them in a formal way. An ontology uses grammar to employ the vocabulary terms to express something meaningful within a specified domain of interest. The vocabulary is used to make queries and assertions.

Formally represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, using a shared vocabulary to denote the types, properties, and interrelationships of those concepts.

Originally used in philosophy to refer to the kind of things that exist, an ontology is interpreted as “ a specification of a conceptualization ” (Tom R. Gruber) in the context of artificial intelligence. In practical terms, an ontology is the set of terms of a vocabulary about a given domain and all the relationships between these terms. It can be written as an RDF document with classes and properties available for creating instances and making assertions.

A logical theory accounting for the intended meaning of a formal vocabulary (i.e., its ontological commitment to a particular conceptualization of the world). The intended models of a logical language using such a vocabulary are constrained by its ontological commitment. An ontology indirectly reflects this commitment (and the underlying conceptualization) by approximating these intended models.

This term refers to a branch of philosophy that studies the meaning of being. In computer science and information science, an ontology is a data model that represents a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. The focus of this study is on the former meaning.

An ontology is a formal description of the meaning of the information stored in a system. Ontology provides explicit domain theories that can be used to make semantics of information explicit and machine processable.

Formal and explicit specification of a shared conceptualization.

A formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts

In the context of knowledge sharing, the chapter uses the term ontology to mean a specification of conceptual relations. An ontology is the concepts and relationships that can exist for an agent or a community of agents. The chapter refers to designing ontologies for the purpose of enabling knowledge sharing and re-use.

A structured relation of concepts capable of being embedded in Information Systems.

Formal representation of knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, using a shared vocabulary to denote the types, properties, and interrelationships of those concepts.

Represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and the relationships among those concepts. It can be used to reason about the entities within that domain and may be used to describe the domain.

A term that comes from philosophy. In KE/KM, an ontology is a formal naming and definition of the types, properties, and interrelationships of the entities that really or fundamentally exist for a particular domain of discourse. It is thus a practical application of philosophical ontology, with a taxonomy A KE/KM ontology compartmentalizes the variables needed for some set of computations and establishes the relationships between them; thus, an ontology is used to limit complexity and to organize and structure information.

description of a universe of domain in a language that a computer can process.

Ontologies are defined as “explicit conceptualisation(s) of a domain” (Gruber, 1993), and are seen as a key to realise the vision of the semantic web.

Model of knowledge representation used especially in the areas of Semantic Web and artificial intelligence. Ontologies are used to represent domain knowledge using concepts, relations and axioms.

A formal definition of a common set of terms that are used to describe and represent a domain.

The most general branch of metaphysics, concerned with the nature of being; the study of existence.

Comes from the Greek words onto (being) and logos (study) meaning the study of being or the basic categories for existence.

Formal representation of domain knowledge, containing a class hierarchy and possibly relations and functions between these classes. ORS: Ontology repair system which equips a planning agent to proceed successfully with problematic interaction by identifying and repairing any ontological problems which may have led to the difficulties. AU21: Reference appears to be out of alphabetical order. Please check

Ontology refers to the nature of one’s beliefs about reality and form the foundation of beliefs that comprise one’s comprehensive worldview ( Rehman & Alharthi, 2016 ).

An ontology can be defined as “an explicit formal specification of how to represent the objects, concepts, and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that hold among them.” (Dictionary.com, 2003). Basically, this means that an ontology is a collection of domain concepts and their relationships.

A method of representing items of knowledge (for example, ideas, facts, things) in a way that defines the relationships and classifications of concepts within a specified domain of knowledge.

The most general branch of metaphysics, concerned with the nature of being; the study of existence.

(from the Greek ??, genitive ??t??: being (part. of e??a?: to be) and –????a: writing about, study of) in philosophy relates to the fundamental branch of metaphysics. It studies being or existence as well as the basic categories thereof—trying to find out what entities and what types of entities exist. Ontology has strong implications for the conceptions of reality. This concept has been borrowed by information science, where it indicates an exhaustive and rigorous conceptual schema describing a specific domain (that may not cover completely the knowledge on that topic, but just describe the domain of interest chosen by the ontology creator/s).

An ontology is a formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization.

A formal representation of a domain of discourse that describes concepts and relationships among them. This way, it provides a common vocabulary and allows for the inference of new knowledge.

An explicit formal specification of how to represent objects, concepts, and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and relationships holding among them. Systems that share the same ontology are able to communicate about domain of discourse without necessarily operating on a globally shared theory. System commits to ontology if its observable actions are consistent with definitions in the ontology.

Is a formal definition of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between them.

In computer science, an ontology is an explicit and formal representation of concepts, properties and relationships concerning a given domain, which specifies the semantics of a shared vocabulary. Actually, there is a huge variability in the formalization degree and in the specificity level of ontologies. Along the former dimension, ontologies range from rather informal controlled vocabularies to strongly axiomatized logic theories. As regards specificity, they range from rather general cross-domain foundational ontologies to semantic representations relevant to very specific application domains. Ontologies expressed in formal languages support, to some extent, automatic reasoning.

A specification of a conceptualization consisting of a hierarchy of class types and non-hierarchical relationships between classes.

is a formal specification of a conceptualization, that is, an abstract and simplified view of the world that we wish to represent, described in a language that is equipped with a formal semantics.

A conceptual model of the domain under consideration. It defines the structure of the domain, by the specification of the relevant concepts and structural relations between them.

An ontology is a formal and explicit specification of a shared conceptualization. “Conceptualization” refers to an abstraction of a domain that identifies the relevant concepts in that domain. “Shared” means that an ontology captures consensual knowledge. An ontology typically consists of a hierarchical description of important concepts in a domain, along with descriptions of the properties of each concept.

A machine-readable specification of a conceptualization in which the type of concepts used and the constraints on their use are explicitly defined.

A set of classes and relationships between classes to represent the concepts of a specific domain.

A formal specification of a shared conceptualization. In other words, everything we know about a subject. An ontology is usually expressed as a network of classes, each of which represents a conceptual entity (i.e. a category) of the subject. Classes are connected with semantically rich relationships, while constraints may also be applied.

Nature of reality in research.

Object description and relationship between objects in a domain.

Information sharing among supply chain business partners using information systems is an important enabler for supply chain management. There are diverse types of data to be shared across supply chain, namely – order, inventory, shipment, and customer service. Consequently, information about these issues needs to be shared in order to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in supply chain management. In this way, information-sharing activities require that human and / or machine agents agree on common and explicit business-related concepts (the shared conceptualization among hardware / software agents customers, and service providers) are known as explicit ontologies; and this help to exchange data and derived knowledge out of the data to achieve collaborative goals of business operations.

Information sharing among supply chain business partners using information system is an important enabler for supply chain management. There are different types of data to be shared across supply chain, namely – order, demand, inventory, shipment, and customer service. Consequently, information about these issues needs to be shared in order to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in supply chain management. In this way, information-sharing activities require that human and/or machine agents agree on common and explicit business related concepts (the shared conceptualizations among hardware/software agents, customers, and service providers) are known as explicit ontologies; and these help to exchange data and derived knowledge out of the data to achieve collaborative goals of business operations.

Information sharing among supply chain business partners using information system is an important enabler for supply chain management. There are different types of data to be shared across supply chain, namely – order, demand, inventory, shipment, and customer service. Consequently, information about these issues needs to be shared in order to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in supply chain management. In this way, information-sharing activities require that human and/or machine agents agree on common and explicit business-related concepts (the shared conceptualizations among hardware/software agents, customers, and service providers) are known as explicit ontologies; and these help to exchange data and derived knowledge out of the data to achieve collaborative goals of business operations.

A set of representational primitives used to model a domain of knowledge.

It is a formal specification of a conceptualization; it defines a common vocabulary to share information in a domain.

An ontology is a specification of a conceptualization. In both computer science and information science, an ontology is a data model that represents a domain and is used to reason about the objects in that domain and the relations between them.

A formal description of knowledge, presented as a set of concepts, data entries or entities having a specific meaning within a domain of knowledge or discourse, together with the relationships that exist among them.

Represents the organization of learning or course materials and services around small domain of semantically enriched objects Semantics

Ontology is a cognitive artifact allowing the shared design and operation for knowledge. Ontology is composed from concepts related to a domain of interest linked with relations.

Information sharing among supply chain business partners using information systems is an important enabler for supply chain management. There are diverse types of data to be shared across supply chain, namely – order, inventory, shipment , and customer service . Consequently, information about these issues needs to be shared to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in supply chain management. In this way, information-sharing activities require that human and / or machine agents agree on common and explicit business-related concepts (the shared conceptualization among hardware / software-agents, customers, and service providers) are known as explicit ontologies; and this help to exchange data and derived knowledge out of the data to achieve collaborative goals of business operations.

A formal conceptualization of a domain.

Is a domain concept representation, their properties and relationships.

A formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation. A tool that can conceptualise a world view by capturing general knowledge and providing basic notions and concepts for basic terms and their interrelations.

How one views reality or one’s beliefs about reality – typically, for the dominant paradigm, reality is objective, and can be quantified and measured. Ontology can also be described as one’s world-view, which determines understanding of what exists.

The approach to conceptualize knowledge in a field of study.

Formal and explicit specification of a shared conceptualization, where conceptualization refers to an abstract model of a concept in the world; formal means that the ontology should be machine readable; explicit means that the type of concepts and the constraints on their use are explicitly defined; and shared reflects the notion that an ontology captures consensual knowledge accepted by a group.

Ontology is a formal naming and definition of the types, properties, and interrelationships of the entities that exist in a particular domain of discourse.

A term that comes from philosophy. In KE/KM, an ontology is a formal naming and definition of the types, properties, and interrelationships of the entities that really or fundamentally exist for a particular domain of discourse. It is thus a practical application of philosophical ontology, with a taxonomy A KE/KM ontology compartmentalizes the variables needed for some set of computations and establishes the relationships between them; thus, an ontology is used to limit complexity and to organize and structure information.

A description of the concepts and relationships of objects in a formal way using a controlled vocabulary.

A formal representation of knowledge as a set of concepts within a particular domain and the relations between these concepts.

Set of terms of knowledge, which includes vocabulary, relationships and a set of logical rules and inference about a particular domain.

A description of a concept with a common understanding in a particular domain.

An ontology is similar to a dictionary or glossary, but with greater detail and structure that enables computers to process its content. An ontology consists of a set of concepts, axioms, and relationships that describe a domain of interest (IEEE Standard Upper Ontology Working Group). An ontology can also be read by humans, who do not necessarily need to be computer specialists to interpret its meaning.

Is an explicit specification of the structure of the certain domain that includes a vocabulary (i.e. a list of logical constants and predicate symbols) for referring to the subject area, and a set of logical statements expressing the constraints existing in the domain and restricting the interpretation of the vocabulary; it provides a vocabulary for representing and communicating knowledge about some topic and a set of relationships and properties that hold for the entities denoted by that vocabulary.

Ontology provides a framework to determine a domain of interest and to build a common understanding in this domain between different applications by representing concepts and relationships that exist between these concepts.

An ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain. Ontologies are used as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it.

Provides a vocabulary to represent and communicate knowledge about the domain and a set of relationships containing the terms of the vocabulary at a conceptual level.

Information sharing among supply chain business partners using information systems is an important enabler for supply chain management. There are diverse types of data to be shared across supply chain, namely – order, inventory, shipment, and customer service. Consequently, information about these issues needs to be shared in order to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in supply chain management. In this way, information-sharing activities require that human and / or machine agents agree on common and explicit business-related concepts (the shared conceptualization among hardware / software agents, and service providers) are known as explicit ontologies; and this help to exchange data and derived knowledge out of the data to achieve collaborative goals of business operations.

A formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization. It is a formal description of the concepts and relationships that are relevant for a given domain.

It is a structured knowledge source that explicitly and consensually represents the concepts and the semantic interrelations of a domain, with the purpose of sharing and re-using knowledge. Ontologies should, at least, contain a taxonomical backbone. Non-taxonomic relationships, properties stating concept attributes, logical axioms defining restrictions or instances representing specific objects can be also included.

A description of a knowledge domain in a machine-understandable format, using classes, attributes, relations, restrictions and logic rules.

Is set of well-defined concepts describing a specific domain.

The term ontology essentially refers to the study of being or existence. It seeks to describe or posit the basic categories and relationships of being or existence to define entities and types of entities within its frame work. In Greek philosophy, ontology means understanding the eternal reality (Reginald, 1985). Plato defined the reality as primary and the perception and experience of reality as secondary. Socrates held the similar view that the purpose of learning was to recognize eternal truth and therefore the instruction was to remind someone of something already known and accepted as true (Spector, 2001). This classical view of ontology has changed due to a realization that the explication and uncovering of external reality involve human perceiver and that human judgment with respect to such uncovering is subject to error. One of the assumptions of modern ontology is that instruction should focus on bodies of knowledge rather than individual knowledge. Instead of relying on one-to-one correspondence between individual beliefs and external reality, the modern ontology proposes a coherence theory of truth in which acceptance or rejection of new beliefs should be based on how well new beliefs fit with and how coherent they are with the established beliefs (Quine & Ullian, 1978; Spector, 2001). This assumption is important in that it influences the formation of ontology in computer science in which the shared conceptualization of reality across knowledge domains is emphasized.

In computer science this term refers to the attempt of formulate an exhaustive and rigorous conceptual schema into a given domain, with the aim of making communication and information sharing among systems easier.

Related to how we view the nature of the external world. The two extreme positions are:

An explicit specification of conceptualization. A semantic data model that describes the concepts and their relationships. It contains a controlled vocabulary and a grammar for using the vocabulary terms. The ontology enables to make queries and assertions and reasoning. The most popular form to describe ontology is RDF and OWL.

Formal representation of domain knowledge, containing a class hierarchy and possibly relations and functions between these classes.

Questions regarding our assumptions of being, reality existence, what does it mean to be? Ontological questions are often followed by epistemological questions, i.e. how can we know anything about being. Both ontological and epistemological questions are investigations of the boundaries of knowledge and existence. Ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.

Formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts.

Simply, it can be treated as vocabulary that specifies not only definition, but also relationship among “words”.

An abstract yet systematic description of the information contained in an object within a self-declared domain. Ontologies are often used, in databases, to describe their data with their relations and how they correspond to similar data entities in other databases.

It is a concept and relationship with respect to a certain domain.

A collection of pre-defined words and their synonyms.

A model (usually logic based) representing the main entities and their relationships within a domain of discourse.

An ontology is a controlled vocabulary that describes objects and the relations between them in a formal way, and has a grammar for using the vocabulary terms to express something meaningful within a specified domain of interest.

The study of what exists.

Information sharing among supply chain business partners using information systems is an important enabler for supply chain management. There are diverse types of data to be shared across supply chain, namely order, inventory, shipment, and customer service. Consequently, information about these issues needs to be shared in order to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in supply chain management. In this way, information-sharing activities require that human and/or machine agents agree on common and explicit business-related concepts (the shared conceptualization among hardware/software agents customers, and service providers) are known as explicit ontologies; and this help to exchange data and derived knowledge out of the data to achieve collaborative goals of business operations.

An explicit, formal specification of a conceptualization that consists of a set of terms in a domain and the relations among them.

The term “Ontology” originated in philosophy and has been used in many different ways. In computer and information sciences, an “Ontology” formally represents knowledge using a set of concepts within a domain

Ontology is defined as a specification of a conceptualization, in other words, an ontology contains a clear definition of a terminology in a way that can be used by computers for information exchange.

According to the IEEE Standard Upper Ontology Working Group, an ontology “is similar to a dictionary or glossary, but with greater detail and structure that enables computers to process its content. An ontology consists of a set of concepts, axioms, and relationships that describe a domain of interest”

Structure that defines concepts and their relations in a specific domain.

Ontology is a cognitive artefact allowing the shared design and operation for knowledge. Ontology is composed from concepts related to a domain of interest linked with relations.

Is an explicit and formal specification of a conceptualization. It consists of hierarchical descriptions of concepts and a set of properties that describe each concept.

An explicit formal specification of conceptualization that consists of a set of terms in a domain and the relations among them.

Refers to what is researched (the nature of things).

A data model that represents a domain and is used to reason about the objects in that domain and the relations between them.

Ontology is a specification mechanism used for knowledge representation based on a shared conceptualization.

A formal explicit description of concepts (called classes) in a domain of discourse, properties of each concept describing various features and attributes of the concept, instances (specific objects in the domain of interest), and restrictions on properties. The properties are binary relationships on concepts.

Information sharing among supply chain business partners using information systems is an important enabler for supply chain management. There are diverse types of data to be shared across the supply chain, namely – order, inventory, shipment , and customer service . Consequently, information about these issues needs to be shared to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in supply chain management. In this way, information-sharing activities require that human and / or machine agents agree on common and explicit business-related concepts (the shared conceptualization among hardware / software-agents, customers, and service providers) are known as explicit ontologies; and this help to exchange data and derived knowledge out of the data to achieve collaborative goals of business operations.

Is a formal, machine-readable representation of a specific body of knowledge. The ontology would typically include the definition of the relevant concepts, categories, properties and the relationships between them.

The specification of a conceptualization of a knowledge domain. It’s a controlled vocabulary that describes objects and the relations among them in a formal way, and has a grammar for using the vocabulary terms to express something meaningful within a specified domain of interest.

A controlled vocabulary that describes objects and the relations between them in a formal way, and has a grammar for using the vocabulary terms to express something meaningful within a specified domain of interest.

Ontology is the branch of philosophy that concepts such as existence, being, becoming, and reality.

A representation of a certain domain, through the definition of concepts, relationships between concepts, and instances of concepts.

A semantic data model that describes the concepts and their relationships. It contains a controlled vocabulary and a grammar for using the vocabulary terms. The ontology enables to make queries and assertions and reasoning. The most popular form to describe ontology is RDF and OWL.

is one of the essential ingredients in the layered technologies of the Semantic Web. An ontology provides a vocabulary of consolidated concepts arranged in types and categories in well-defined structure for unambiguous use in a specific domain. An ontology in computer science is normally accompanied with a language, usually in an XML representation, for defining the vocabulary and specifying the relationships between the concepts in the vocabulary, e.g. Web Ontology Language (OWL), and Web Services Modeling Language (WSML).

A structural framework for organizing information by its semantic, forming a knowledge representation about the world or some part of it.

An ontology is a collection of concepts and relations among them, based on the principles of classes, identified by categories, properties that are different aspects of the class and instances that are the things

formalized database of conceptual knowledge that can be used by computers to do inferencing

Information sharing among supply chain business partners using information systems is an important enabler for supply chain management. There are diverse types of data to be shared across the supply chain, namely – order, inventory, shipment , and customer service . Consequently, information about these issues needs to be shared to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in supply chain management. In this way, information-sharing activities require that human and / or machine agents agree on common and explicit business-related concepts (the shared conceptualization among hardware / software-agents, customers, and service providers) are known as explicit ontologies; and this help to exchange data and derived knowledge out of the data to achieve collaborative goals of business operations.

It is a specification of a conceptualization. Ontology is a description (like a formal specification of a program) of the concepts and relationships that can exist for an agent or a community of agents. This definition is consistent with the usage of ontology as set-of-concept-definitions, but more general.

Ontology is the branch of philosophy that is concerned with the description of a domain, the objects in such a domain, and their relations that exist among these objects.

Study of being and its nature.

- Ontology is a formal and explicit specification of a shared conceptualization that can be used for sharing and reasoning on knowledge

A conceptualization of a domain. It is consisted of entities, attributes, relationships and axioms in a format which is human understandable and machine-readable.

An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization. The term is borrowed from philosophy, where ontology is a systematic account of Existence. For knowledge-based systems, what “exists” is exactly that which can be represented. When the knowledge of a domain is represented in a declarative formalism, the set of objects that can be represented is called the universe of discourse. This set of objects, and the describable relationships among them, are reflected in the representational vocabulary with which a knowledge-based program represents knowledge. Thus, we can describe the ontology of a program by defining a set of representational terms. In such an ontology, definitions associate the names of entities in the universe of discourse (e.g., classes, relations, functions, or other objects) with human-readable text describing what the names are meant to denote, and formal axioms that constrain the interpretation and well-formed use of these terms

Ontologies define how the ideals and beliefs of reality are perceived by individual or group of individuals. Ontologies are definitions and ordering systems of a world view. These world views limit the willingness of a group or individual to accept a new concept or idea depending on how that concept fits with the existing perception of order.

The study of beliefs about the nature of reality.

Ontology is a set of well-defined concepts describing a specific domain. The concepts are defined using a subclass hierarchy, by assigning and defining properties and by defining relationships between the concepts (van Rees, 2007).

A data structures used to define concepts, relationships, properties, restrictions and, conditions that are applicable on that concept. Semantic technologies perform mapping and reasoning with data using the defined ontologies.

A representation of the meanings of terms in a vocabulary.

A set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them.

A collection of pre-defined words and their synonyms.

Ontology is a shared knowledge standard or a knowledge model defining the primitive concepts, relations, rules, and their instances comprising a relevant knowledge topic. Ontology is used for capturing, structuring, and enlarging explicit and tacit topic knowledge across people, organizations, systems, and software services.

The understanding of what to know, e.g. the understanding of which knowledge is relevant.

Ontology refers to the set of characteristics that specifies a certain class of individuals. For emotions to play their part in regulating social bonding and cooperation, it is required that the individuals involved shared a common ontology, so they be affected similarly by the same events, they registered the commitment that binds them in similar form, they attributed a close enough meaning to a given expression and felt compelled to adjust the commitments in the way it was expected from the message conveyed. It is likely that the evolution of emotions and their expression from Mammals to Primates to Humans laid the basic foundations of that kind of shared ontology.

In the context of AI, we can describe the ontology of a program by defining a set of representational terms. In such an ontology, definitions associate the names of entities in the universe of discourse (e.g., classes, relations, functions, or other objects) with human-readable text describing what the names mean, and formal axioms that constrain the interpretation and well-formed use of these terms. In this text we use it to describe logical relationships in an instructional system.

Formally represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, using a shared vocabulary to denote the types, properties, and interrelationships of those concepts.

A formal, explicit model describing concepts in the real world using classes, relations, and attributes.

Is a model for describing the world that consists of a set of types, properties, and relationship types.

Specification of a conceptualization or a formal description of concept in a domain.

The study of or assumptions regarding the nature of reality. Ontology relates to how existence can be understood.

A formal and explicit specification of a shared conceptualization.

Literature now generally agrees on the Gruber’s terms to define an ontology: explicit specification of a shared conceptualization of a domain. The domain is the world that the ontology describes. It can be a general domain or a more specific one. This description uses a vocabulary of concepts which is understandable and agreed by people of the domain; here is the meaning of “shared conceptualization.” The ontology can be implemented in several languages with a different level of formalization and expressivity, with no ambiguity that’s why ontology is an “explicit specification.”

A representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. The relationships could be on the form of “contains”, “is a part of”, “is equivalent”, etc. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain.

A vocabulary particular to a domain, application, or task, visualized as a graph of concepts (nodes) and relationships (edges).

Studies being or existence and their basic categories and relationships, to determine what entities and what types of entities exist.

A formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation. A tool that can conceptualise a world view by capturing general knowledge and providing basic notions and concepts for basic terms and their interrelations.

is a specification of a conceptualization which provides a shared vocabulary for a given domain, as well as relationships between and constraints imposed upon concepts.

A system of representation that shows the formal naming and definitions of the categories associated to entities. It describes the properties and relations between the concepts refer by such entities, situated in a specific or general knowledge domain.

A specification of a conceptualization. Ontology can be said to study conceptions of reality.

A personal way of being that shapes how the individual engages with, and is in, the world.

The study of what exists.

The goal of an ontology is to ensure that all users of a given set of data have the same understanding of the words and concepts within that dataset. In knowledge management, ontologies focus on creating dictionaries of commonly defined terms.

A formal and explicit specification of a shared conceptualization.

Related to existence, different forms of being in the world.

The branch of metaphysics which considers the concept of existence and the nature of being.

An ontology is a formal specification of a certain domain that describes a set of concepts, relationships and formal axioms that restrict the interpretation of concept instances.

A format for declarative knowledge representation in computer science. It supports open-world paradigm.

A set of concepts and categories or classification representation in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them. In this chapter, ontology is not the philosophical study of being.

A set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them.

A formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation. A tool that can conceptualise a world view by capturing general knowledge and providing basic notions and concepts for basic terms and their interrelations.

is a shared, formal conceptualization of a domain, i.e. a description of concepts and their relationships. This set of concepts is connected in a network or graph and used to described specific knowledge areas and can represent knowledge.

A formal description of a given domain

There exist many definitions of ontology, amongst which the definition given by Tom Gruber is a widely accepted one. An ontology is “an explicit specification of a conceptualization …When the knowledge of a domain is represented in a declarative formalism, the set of objects that can be represented is called the universe of discourse. Those sets of objects, and the describable relationship among them, are reflected in the representational vocabulary with which a knowledge-base program represents knowledge…” (Gruber, 1993).

An explicit formal specification of how to represent the objects, concepts, and entities existing in some area of interest and the relationships among them.

Ontology is an explicit formal specification of how to represent the device objects, concepts and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that hold among them ( Jakkilinki et al. , 2005 ). Ontologies provide metadata schema, along with the vocabulary of the concepts used in annotation.

It is the conceptualization of some portion of reality. The perspective of ontology is sharing and understanding the domain knowledge in a semantic and unambiguous manner.

An explicit description of a domain. It introduces a common vocabulary which enables to uniform interpretation of domain knowledge and understanding and explaining the concepts of domain. Most ontologies describe individuals (instances) classes (concepts), attributes, and relations.

A study of conceptions of reality and the nature of being. In computer science, in fact, ontologies are representations of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between these concepts.

A semantic structure useful to standardize and provide rigorous definitions of the terminology used in a domain and to describe the knowledge of the domain. It is composed of a controlled vocabulary, which describes the concepts of the considered domain, and a semantic network, which describes the relations among such concepts. Each concept is connected to other concepts of the domain through semantic relations that specify the knowledge of the domain. A general concept can be described by several terms that can be synonyms or characteristic of different domains in which the concept exists. For this reason the ontologies tend to have a hierarchical structure, with generic concepts/terms at the higher levels of the hierarchy and specific concepts/terms at the lover levels, connected by different types of relations.

A formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain

An ontology is a “formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation”. It is composed of concepts and relations structured into hierarchies (i.e. they are linked together by using the Specialisation/Generalisation relationship). A heavyweight ontology is a lightweight ontology (i.e. an ontology simply based on a hierarchy of concepts and a hierarchy of relations) enriched with axioms used to fix the semantic interpretation of concepts and relations.

The most general branch of metaphysics, concerned with the nature of being; the study of existence.

In philosophy this term means “the study of the nature of the being, becoming, existence, and reality as well as the basic categories of the being and their relations” (source: Wikipedia). In the Web of Data an Ontology is a complex metadata schema that describes a reality or a context, expressing the categories of resources and their relations.

A description of concepts and relationships that can be used by people or software agents who want to share information within a domain.

In semantic web and related technologies, an ontology (aka domain ontology) is a set of taxonomies together with typed relationships connecting concepts from the taxonomies and, possibly, sets of integrity rules and constraints defining classes and relationships. Ontologies are defined abstractly using predicate logic or a suitable subset (e.g., description logic). The concrete syntax for ontologies is often based on web publication and search requirements, at the time of this publication, the web ontology language OWL (see chapter references above) is the most frequently used language as it builds on the web resource description framework that is used in many web content management and content syndication standards.

An ontology as an explicit conceptualization of a domain. Legal ontologies represent legal norms and are very significant for developing legal knowledge-based systems on the World Wide Web.

Ontology follows relatedness between the terms and sorts individual items into a specific scheme. Many ontology frameworks exist, and a few among them are CIDOC CRM, AAT, BIBO, FRBR, CiTO, FaBio, HiCO, etc. There are four main components in the ontology: class, data property, object property, and individuals.

In philosophy, ontology is the most fundamental branch of metaphysics. It studies being or existence and its basic categories and relationships to determine what entities and what types of entities exist. Ontology thus has strong implications for conceptions of reality. An ontology is therefore a controlled vocabulary that describes objects and the relations between them in a formal way and has a grammar for using the vocabulary terms to express something meaningful within a specified domain of interest (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expertise).

The study and analysis of the state of being in the world.

A formal representation of a domain under consideration. It consists of individuals and classes or concepts (sets of individuals), their properties (attributes) and relations between them (roles). Usually it is represented in a formal language based on first-order logic. For the Web, the standardized languages are RDF (Beckett, 2004) and RDFS (Brickley, 2004), and their follow-up OWL (McGuinness & van Harmelen, 2004), all using the XML syntax.

Defines the basic terms and relations comprising the vocabulary of a topic area, as well as the rules for combining terms and relations to define extensions to the vocabulary.

The branch of metaphysics which considers the concept of existence and the nature of being.

The branch of philosophy known as ontology studies concepts like existence, being, becoming, and reality. It addresses issues such as how entities are classified into fundamental categories and which of these entities exist at the most fundamental level.

The study of being or existence. It defines entities and their relationships within a certain framework.

Definition of the concepts relevant to a particular topic or area of interest, and their relationships.

Structured representation of conceptual model.

An ontology may be practically defined as a controlled set of terms and constraints for expressing the domain of interest. An ontology can range from a simple set of terms (e.g., {PERSON, LOCATION, ORGANIZATION}) to a taxonomy (with concepts and sub-concepts e.g., ACTOR and ENTREPRENEUR would be sub-concepts of PERSON) to a general graph with equational constraints e.g., that the domain and range of the relation starred-in is ACTOR and MOVIE respectively. Any KG that is ontologized thus should obey such constraints at the instance level.

is a formalized mean to express some part of reality in a well-organized manner. One of the most important qualities of ontologies is the fact they are legible for artificial entities like computer programs. Since this formalization brings inevitable simplification and classification of a part of the modeled domain, we say ontologies are a form of abstraction through conceptualization.

It is the conceptualization of the knowledge of a certain domain.

Is a vocabulary that contains the formal naming of concepts and the definition of their types, properties, and interrelations. It enables a common interpretation of semantic metadata, which allows systems to understand the actual meaning and context of exchanged data.

It provides a vocabulary to represent and communicate knowledge about the domain and a set of relationship containing the terms of the vocabulary at a conceptual level.

An explicit formal specification of a conceptualization that consists of a set of terms in a domain and relations among them.

It is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain.

A philosophical study about being and existence, and their categories and relations.

It is a shared structure which classify and organizes all the entities of a given domain.

Data model that constitutes a set of concepts within a domain. The model includes the relationships between those concepts as well as rules for inference and integrity.

The baic theory and terminology that characterize some phenomenon of interest.

Ontology includes the description, systematic naming, and specification of types, properties, and relationships between concepts, data, and entities that underpin one, several, or all spheres of discourse. More specifically, ontology is a means of showing the properties of the subject field and how they apply to it, by identifying a collection of definitions and categories that describe the subject.

Set of representational primitives consisting of machine encoding of terms, concepts, and relations among them to model a domain of knowledge.

A data model that represents the objects, sets of similar objects (i.e., classes), and their interrelations within a domain of discourse.

A specification of conceptualization. In computer science domain, ontology provides a commonly agreed understanding of domain knowledge in a generic way for sharing across applications and groups.

A rigorous and exhaustive organization of some knowledge domain that is usually hierarchical and contains all the relevant entities and their relations.

“A specification of a conceptualization …a description of the concepts and relations that can exist for an agent or a community of agents” (Gruber 2002).

Ontology provides a formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization of a domain that can be communicated between people and heterogeneous and widely spread application systems.

The study of the nature of being, of what exists and does not exist.