Data · Established · Advanced
Ontology
A formal specification of the concepts in a domain and the relationships allowed between them.
What Ontology is
An ontology defines the vocabulary and rules — what a 'patient' is, that a patient can have a diagnosis, that a diagnosis must have a code — so different systems can share meaning.
How it works
Ontologies are expressed in standards such as RDFS, OWL and SKOS, and validated by reasoners that check consistency and infer implied facts.
Why it matters
Consistent semantics is what makes data integration and schema.org-style structured web data work, including the JSON-LD that search engines read.
Common uses
- →Healthcare terminologies
- →Schema.org structured data
- →Enterprise master data
- →Scientific data sharing
Strengths
- ✓Machine-checkable semantics
- ✓Interoperability across systems
Watch for
- ✓Heavyweight to author
- ✓Over-modelling is a common failure
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