XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web

Summary

This chapter served as a brief introduction to ontologies and ontological engineering, the recent subdiscipline of computer and information science originating in knowledge representation and knowledge engineering research in AI. In this chapter we described the roots of ontological engineering, knowledge representation and knowledge engineering, and the lower branches which still help to support the emerging tree and feed sustenance into ontological engineering. We also provided a definition of ontology—actually, a set of definitions of ontology since, as we've seen, the real notion is of an ontology continuum, a range of what can be considered an ontology, from simple taxonomy to logical theory.

Ontological engineering has emerged from ...