Ten Pitfalls Of Enterprise Ontology Management / quote 3 of 6
Ontologies and xml
You can use ontologies as a central location to store the semantics or meaning of the data elements that live on the leaves of XML documents. When they are stored in a well-controlled centralized corporate ontology the definitions of the data elements go beyond the needs of a specific version of a web service. The data elements have individual histories:
Creation dates Approval workflow status Approval committees Revisions and date-stamps of when they were approved for corporate usage
On the other hand, you should not view XML Schemas as containers of the semantics of data elements. XML Schemas are containers of the data elements and each one expresses the order and cardinality of the collection of elements. XML Schemas are the constraints of a specific data exchange. For example, a single developer can add and delete Web services for data subscribers. Your job as a corporate ontologist is to support such activities, maintain semantics, and get out of the way of a specific business unit that has their own instance of specific required fields, which must be present as inputs to their web services. So when people have questions about the meaning of data: that is the ontologist's signal to step in and bring the tools to build semantic precision. But if a problem has to do with what elements are present, what order they appear in a transaction, which data elements are required, and which ones are optional;; it is recommended to let the data publisher and subscriber try to work things out.