Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Ontology

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

Computational ontology; Ontological engineering; Semantic data model

Definition

In thecontext of computer and information sciences, an ontology defines a set of representational primitives with which to model a domain of knowledge or discourse. The representational primitives are typically classes (or sets), attributes (or properties), and relationships (or relations among class members). The definitions of the representational primitives include information about their meaning and constraints on their logically consistent application. In the context of database systems, ontology can be viewed as a level of abstraction of data models, analogous to hierarchical and relational models, but intended for modeling knowledge about individuals, their attributes, and their relationships to other individuals. Ontologies are typically specified in languages that allow abstraction away from data structures and implementation strategies; in practice, the languages of ontologies are closer...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Recommended Reading

  1. Berners-Lee T, Hendler J, Lassila O. The semantic web. Scientific American; 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Gruber TR. A translation approach to portable ontology specifications. Knowl Acquis. 1993;5(2):199–220.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Gruber TR. Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing. Int J Hum Comput Stud. 1995;43(5–6):907–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Guarino N. Formal ontology, conceptual analysis and knowledge representation. Int J Hum Comput Stud. 1995;43(5–6):625–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Hayes PJ. The second naive physics manifesto. In: Moore RC, Hobbs J, editors. Formal theories of the common-sense world. Norwood: Ablex; 1985.

    Google Scholar 

  6. McCarthy J. Circumscription – a form of non-monotonic reasoning. Artif Intell. 1980;5(13):27–39.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. McGuinness DL, van Harmelen F. OWL web ontology language. W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004. Available online at: http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/.

  8. Neches R, Fikes RE, Finin T, Gruber TR, Patil R, Senator T, Swartout WR. Enabling technology for knowledge sharing. AI Mag. 1991;12(3):16–36.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Smith B, Welty C. Ontology – towards a new synthesis. In: Proceedings of the international conference on formal ontology in information systems. 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Sowa JF. Conceptual structures: information processing in mind and machine. Reading: Addison Wesley; 1984.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Standard Upper Ontology Working Group (SUO). IEEE P1600.1. Available online at: http://suo.ieee.org/.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. RealTravel, Emerald Hills, CA, USA

    Tom Gruber

Authors
  1. Tom Gruber
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tom Gruber .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Fac. of IE & Mgmt., Technion--Israel Inst. of Technology, Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Avigdor Gal

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media LLC

About this entry

Cite this entry

Gruber, T. (2016). Ontology. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_1318-2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_1318-2

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation