Page 187 - Data Architecture

Chapter 4.7: Taxonomies
But the largest advantage of using a commercially created taxonomy is that the
commercially created taxonomy does not require a large investment in the creation of the
taxonomy. If an organization decides to manually create their own taxonomies, the
organization is inviting a disaster because of the organization's inability to estimate how

much effort is required to actually build and maintain the taxonomies that it needs.

Dynamics of Taxonomies and Textual Disambiguation

The dynamics of how a taxonomy interacts with textual disambiguation is illustrated in
the simple example seen in Fig. 4.7.6.

Fig. 4.7.6 The application of a taxonomy to raw text.

In Fig. 4.7.6, raw text is shown. The raw text is passed against the taxonomies for a car
and another taxonomy for a motor thoroughfare. The output shows that where the word
“Porsche” is encountered, it is recognized to be part of the taxonomy for car. The word
“Porsche” is changed to the expression “Porsche/car” in the output. The same processing
occurs for “Volkswagen” and “Honda.”

Using the taxonomy for thoroughfare, the term “highway” is seen to be a form of “road.”
The output for “highway” is written out as “highway/road.”

The example in the figure is very simple. But the example serves to illustrate the
dynamics of how the taxonomy is used to interact with raw text inside the textual
disambiguation process. In reality, the actual uses of taxonomies are usually much more
sophisticated and elaborated than this simple example.

It is the use of taxonomies that has been described that is the key to opening the door to
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