An ontology is a formal specification that provides a shareable and reusable knowledge representation . Ontologies are controlled vocabularies built on Semantic Web standards RDF flavors (SKOS or OWL ).

Therefore, they semantically link concepts to classes, concepts to other concepts, concepts to properties , and anything else to anything else using triples.

Consequently, they are semantically expressive and conceptually simple to model, provided the domain of knowledge is simple. Other, more complex domains, or the intersection between domains, will make the production of the ontology more complex.

Examples of ontologies include:

• Taxonomies
• Vocabularies
• Thesaurus
• Topic maps
• Logical models

An ontology specification includes descriptions of concepts and properties in a domain , relationships between concepts, constraints on how relationships can be used, and individuals as members of concepts.

Ontology for Business Analysis

Ontologies in Computer Science

In Computer Science, Information Systems, and Information Science, an ontology is a data model that represents a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between them.

An ontology is used to perform inferences about objects in the domain, as I mentioned earlier. They are currently used in artificial intelligence, semantic web, software engineering, and information architecture as a way of representing knowledge about the world or some part of it.

Reference: https://www.synaptica.com/triples-triads-and-semantics/