The Discipline of Organizing: Professional Edition, 3rd Edition

5.9. Key Points in Chapter Five

• A relationship is “an association among several things, with that association having a particular significance.”

  (See §5.1, “Introduction”)

• Just identifying the resources involved is not enough because several different relationships can exist among the same resources.

  (See §5.2, “Describing Relationships: An Overview”)

• Most relationships between resources can be expressed using a subject-predicate-object model.

  (See §5.3, “The Semantic Perspective” and §5.7.1, “Choice of Implementation”)

• For a computer to understand relational expressions, it needs a computer-processable representation of the relationships among words and meanings that makes every important semantic assumption and property precise and explicit.

  (See §5.3, “The Semantic Perspective”)

• Three broad categories of semantic relationships are inclusion, attribution, and possession.

  (See §5.3.1, “Types of Semantic Relationships”)

• A set of interconnected class inclusion relationships creates a hierarchy called a taxonomy.

  (See §5.3.1.1, “Inclusion”)

• Classification is a class inclusion relationship between an instance and a class.

  (See §5.3.1.1, “Inclusion”)

• Ordering and inclusion relationships are inherently transitive, enabling inferences about class membership and properties.

  (See §5.3.2.2, “Transitivity”)

• Class inclusion relationships form a framework to which other kinds of relationships attach, creating a network of relationships called an ontology.