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Reference Knowledge

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Definition

Reference knowledge is the knowledge about a particular part of the world in a way that is independent from specific objectives, through a theory of the domain [2]. Different knowledge bases reuse or extend subsets of the reference knowledge for application specific tasks.

Key Points

Developing knowledge bases is a laborious process involving domain experts, knowledge engineers and computer scientists. To minimize this effort, often the core theory and concepts of a given domain are represented in a reference knowledgebase that are reused or extended by other application specific knowledge bases. Consider for example, in the biomedical domain, the Foundational Model of Anatomy [3] is considered a reference knowledge base for representing anatomy terms that can be used for representing the mouse anatomy.

One of the important advantages of using reference knowledge bases is that they provide interoperability [1] across the applications using the knowledge. The applications...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Brinkley J., Suciu D., Detwiler L., Gennari J., and Rosse C. A framework for using reference ontologies as a foundation for the semantic web. In Proc. AMIA Annual Symposium, 2006.

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  2. Burgun A. Desiderata for domain reference ontologies in biomedicine. J Biomed Inform, 39(3):307–313, 2003.

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  3. Rosse C., and Mejino J. A reference ontology for biomedical informatics: the foundational model of anatomy. J Biomed Inform. 36(6):478–500, 2003.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Chintan Patel & Chunhua Weng

Authors
  1. Chintan Patel
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  2. Chunhua Weng
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Patel, C., Weng, C. (2009). Reference Knowledge. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_303

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