Ontology
From Just Solve the File Format Problem
Introduction
The hierarchical structuring of knowledge about things by subcategorising them according to their essential (or at least relevant and/or cognitive) qualities. Ontologies are very important for Digital Preservation as it makes objects and their relations to other objects easier to describe. A very simple, non exhaustive, example of a software object:
- -> Thing
- -> Computer
- -> Hardware
- -> Operating System
- -> Software
- -> Operating System
- -> Hardware
- -> Computer
Computer relates to Hardware, and Hardware has objects like CPU Architecture, Disk, Videocard, etc. Operating Systems could relate to a certain CPU Architecture, which relates back to Hardware. Software can -most of the time- only run on a specific Operating System, which can only run on a certain CPU Architecture, which relates back to a certain type of Hardware.
