What is an Ontology?

Unlike the 400's BC, we don't tend to use the word 'ontology' very often in our day-to-day lives. Most people will find the term to be unfamiliar and unnecessary. However, once you understand the meaning of 'ontology' and where it came from, we think you will secretly learn to love using it, too!

In early philosophy classes, students are introduced to the idea of Plato's 'Forms'. Look around you and locate some chairs; how did you know that they were chairs? It is unlikely that the chairs near you looked anything like the chairs near me.

In philosophy (metaphysics), Plato was the first to make the distinction between the Universal ('what is a dog?') versus the Particular ('this is my beagle, Mr Brooferton').

From philosophy to regulation

These same ideas that Plato first considered come into play when we encode regulation, which is why we use the term 'Ontology'. For example, consider the following regulation:

"A person must be 18 years old to vote."

This example refers to a Universal (a 'person'), as well as the properties that distinguish between specific persons (the particulars) might have.

In this case, the 'Type' that we are regulating is a Person, and the property of a person that we are using in our rules is their date of birth.

A practical definition of an ontology

When we refer to an ontology, we are talking about the 'things' and their 'properties' that we are regulating. Likely this will include types such as 'Person' or 'Corporation', with properties like 'name', 'colour', etc.

In practice, our editor lets you define the data required by regulation by creating *types* that have *properties*. For end-users, types provide a convenient way to group properties together to keep data manageable.