Glossary
Ontology
Definition
In data and analytics, an ontology is a model of the concepts in a business domain and the relationships between them, giving people and AI a shared understanding of what things mean.
What it means in practice
Ontologies come from knowledge representation, where formal languages such as OWL describe concepts with strict logic. For most analytics teams, a practical ontology is enough: a clear model of business entities, their relationships and the rules that govern them.
An ontology sits underneath a semantic layer. The ontology says what a customer, contract or product is and how they connect; the semantic layer turns that understanding into queryable metrics and dimensions.
Example
An insurance ontology defines that a Policy covers one or more Insured Assets, a Claim is filed against a Policy, and a Policyholder can hold many Policies.