> [!tldr] **description of the concepts and relationships that can formally exist for an agent or a community of agents.** > [!warning] Warning on Philosophy > This note is **not** using the word "ontology" the way that philosophy majors would use the word. It's using it the way computer scientists would... which is similar but different. An ontology is an unambiguous analysis of all the entities, their properties, the relations between them, and functions. What can exist. What things can happen. How can do those things all interact and relate to one another. There are top-level (domain-agnostic) ontologies like the [[BFO|Basic Formal Ontology]]. There are also [[Domain-Specific]] Ontologies which specify meaning in a particular [[Namespace]] (effectively). An ontology is where the real world meets the code that is being written to perform functions within it. Models of systems are representations of (usually sections of) that systems ontology. Written ontologies are knowledge encapsulated and encoded for use in the future, use by others, and/or for having a basis upon which re-engineering efforts can be made. - No matter what discipline or domain is being described, most ontologies use the same [[Ontology Components]]. - The internet is a partial ontology, through the use of semantic links (see: [[OWL]]) and things like the [[JSON-LD]] syntax for [[Resource Description Framework|RDF]]. - Describing an ontology takes some variety of [[Ontology Language]] (e.g. [[IDEF5]]), and a software in which to do the work. - [[Protege]] - an ontology software - [[Semantic Wikis]] are a form of Ontology Software. - [[OWL]] - the web's ontology language - [[IDEF5]] - an (old/out of date) ontology language & method **** # More ## Source - [[Wikipedia]] - [Ontology (information science) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)) - [IDEF5 - Ontology Description Capture Method - IDEF](https://www.idef.com/idef5-ontology-description-capture-method/) ## Related - [[IDEF]] - [[BFO]]