Information Architecture Thoughts

Friday, May 12, 2006

Definitions Semantics, Onotology, Taxonomy

SEMANTICS: The subfield of linguistics that studies the meaning of words, parts of words, phrases, sentences and texts. Semantics includes the study of thematic roles, argument structure, and its linking to syntax. Semantics deals with sense and reference, truth conditions, and discourse analysis (wikipedia).
See Linguistics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics

Metadata Semantics: The schema on wich we store metadata about data in an organized fashion and the contents of that metadata repository.

Semantic Web: The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for interchange of data, where on the original Web we only had interchange of documents. Also it is about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing. (W3C)

Reference:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic

ONTOLOGY: In the context of knowledge sharing, I use the term ontology to mean a specification of a conceptualization. That is, an ontology is a description (like a formal specification of a program) of the concepts and relationships that can exist for an agent or a community of agents. This definition is consistent with the usage of ontology as set-of-concept-definitions, but more general. And it is certainly a different sense of the word than its use in philosophy. (By Tom Gruber)

TAXONOMY: The hierarchical organization of data in categories and subcategories or sets and subsets, a XML schema is a very good example of a predefined taxonomy. (or a method for categorizing and organizing content to solve business problems as described by The Taxonomy Warehouse)

Welcome, what's on the horizon...

Welcome!!

Thank you for stopping by, I will try to keep a journal of my findings and create an informal repository for Enterprise Information Architecture definitions and concepts, as I am just starting my journey in this field and do not hold the definitive truth on information, data management and or business intelligence, I will try to post a lot of references to useful resources.

Ignacio

First Reference:
DAMA / Wilshire Metadata Conference 2006, presentation slides.
http://www.wilshireconferences.com/MD2006/presentations_2up_bw.html