A Practitioner's Guide To Taxonomies, Part I

The Prep Work

Introduction

A taxonomy is a low-fidelity semantic structure with high returns on investment. Through hierarchical relationships alone, taxonomies support definitions, establish context, create meaning, and enable inference, without the complexity or the overhead of full ontological modeling. Taxonomy is the third stage in the Ontology Pipeline® framework, yet it’s often the first semantic structure organizations attempt to build. It’s also the structure many enterprises rush to automate, absent a controlled vocabulary. This creates problems.