Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Putting Ontologies to Work

Judging the likely Success of an Ontology "Clay Shirky is obviously right when he states that a single monolithic ontology will never work. His critics are equally right when they claim the Semantic web will only work if it is a m�lange [melange] of multiple interoperable Ontologies. What is missing from the debate is a more detailed explanation of what ontologies are good at, how they interoperate, and why systems based on ontologies succeed or fail."

"Ontologies, far from being an unproven new concept, are already in practical daily use. They form the foundation of classification systems, databases, and object oriented software applications."

I enjoyed reading this article, especially as it touches on many areas (like the relational model) and previous articles. This is virtually the perfect anti-Shirky piece.

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