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ontology

Applications of Ontology

In which scenario we are going for an Ontology? Can anyone tells some real time applications of Ontology?

While googling I noticed about some semantic web applications are using ontology. But still i didn't got the exact idea about semantic web applications.

From this link i got something about creation of Ontologies, but still I am confusing for what we are going for Ontology by neglecting the traditional databases. And i didn't found any real time applications that using Ontology concept.

Thank you in advance

Solution

  • Ontologies do not replace databases, but can be used to augment them.

    Ontologies provide kind of a common vocabulary for multiple systems, so that data coming from one system can be processed in the other. You could, of course, define one fixed vocabulary (like, e.g., HTML) to describe your data. But in this case you are bound to the defined terms and every new kind of data will lead to a rebuilding of your vocabulary.

    Ontologies, on the other hand, are more open. So there are some high level ontologies, that define stuff like "country", "town" or "human being". Based on this you can then create your own ontology and say something like 

    An employee is a human being.
A store is a geographic location with ...
Each store has at least one employee.

    You can then use so called Reasoners, to deduce additional information from that based on the other semantic information you have access to. So , e.g., the following information might be deduced:

    "An employee is a human being." + "Each store has at least one employee."
=> Each store has at least one human being.

    This is a simple example, but you get the point.

    Besides that reasoning over given information, the semantic annotation can be used in data integration: If the system knows the kind of data it is dealing with, it can make much better suggestions how to integrate it in the current knowledge base. There is plenty of research in that area!

    So in the end ontologies serve two purposes:

    1. Augment your data, so others can understand and use it.
    2. Retrieve additional knowledge from your current information by using a Reasoner.

    As for real life examples, the following come to mind:

    • schema.org describe your website data in a semantic way and help the search engines find it.
    • Several catalogs of species or substances used in Biology and Pharmacy

    Also this question might help: