The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a standard for creating web ontologies. It is an official W3C standard. With a well created ontology you can query for data.

I  am often asked what the differences are between an ontology and a taxonomy. They are often used interchangeable, but what is the real difference? A taxonomy is a classification of things in a certain domain.An ontology describes the world. Some people think of it as putting the universe in a bottle. Look at the following example: TAXONOMY: Cats     Related term: Housepets     Narrower term: tabby cat, black cat, kitten     Broader term: Housepets [...]

"In computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_%28information_science%29)

Semantic web search engine.

View a large collection of OWL files. In this Protege library you will find a huge set of ontologies in several subjects. When you start your own ontology, you should first look here.

From today on, this new website with all information about ontologies for professional life is online. Please participate in discussions and enter questions about your own topics. You are more then welcome to join this community, so please register as a user!