
Chapter 11 Semantics and Business Metadata
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11.4.3 Taxonomy
A taxonomy is a classification scheme that adds organization in the form of
a hierarchy to the terms and relates them to one another in a parent/child or
broad term/narrow term relationship. For example, a fork is an eating utensil;
dinner forks and dessert forks are examples of special kinds of forks. The broad
term is “eating utensil” and the narrow term is “fork”; the narrow terms for
“fork” are “dinner fork” and “dessert fork” This is the foundation for express-
ing good definitions and semantics and is an excellent starting place to capture
meaning. A taxonomy is a step beyond ...