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Reference Knowledge

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Definition

Reference knowledge is the knowledge about a particular part of the world in a way that is independent from specific objectives, through a theory of the domain [2]. Different knowledge bases reuse or extend subsets of the reference knowledge for application specific tasks.

Key Points

Developing knowledge bases is a laborious process involving domain experts, knowledge engineers and computer scientists. To minimize this effort, often the core theory and concepts of a given domain are represented in a reference knowledgebase that are reused or extended by other application specific knowledge bases. Consider for example, in the biomedical domain, the Foundational Model of Anatomy [3] is considered a reference knowledge base for representing anatomy terms that can be used for representing the mouse anatomy.

One of the important advantages of using reference knowledge bases is that they provide interoperability [1] across the applications using the knowledge. The applications...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Brinkley J, Suciu D, Detwiler L, Gennari J, Rosse C. A framework for using reference ontologies as a foundation for the semantic web. AMIA Ann Symp Proc. 2006;2006:96–100.

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  2. Burgun A. Desiderata for domain reference ontologies in biomedicine. J Biomed Inform. 2003;39(3):307–13.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Rosse C, Mejino J. A reference ontology for biomedical informatics: the foundational model of anatomy. J Biomed Inform. 2003;36(6):478–500.

    Article  Google Scholar 

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Chintan Patel & Chunhua Weng

Authors
  1. Chintan Patel
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  2. Chunhua Weng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chintan Patel .

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. Director, Clinical Programs, CIGNA Healthcare, Bloomfield, Connecticut, USA

    Vipul Kashyap

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media LLC

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Patel, C., Weng, C. (2016). Reference Knowledge. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_303-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_303-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

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

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