What is an ontology compared to a classification system? Is a taxonomy a kind of classification system or a kind of ontology? These are questions that we meet when working with people from industry and public authorities, who need methods and tools for concept clarification, for developing meta data sets or for obtaining advanced search facilities. In this paper we will present an attempt at answering these questions. We will give a presentation of various types of ontologies and briefly introduce terminological ontologies. Furthermore we will argue that classification systems, e.g. product classification systems and meta data taxonomies, should be based on ontologies.

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