The semantic relationships of concepts and entities within a given domain may be described by various logic-based languages or vocabularies.  These expressions are often formally termed "ontologies" in the technical literature.

Ontologies are a central component of the semantic Web and Linked Data.  These ontologies are most often written in RDF (Resource Description Framework) or other language variants based on RDF. Use of common frameworks enables descriptions of different domains and the instance data within them to be semantically related via their ontology constructs.

Zitgist principals are lead editors on four mainstream, public ontologies ranging from the domains of linking subject concepts to the use of citations and on to finance and music.  These ontologies, in turn, use the vocabularies of RDF Schema, the dialects of OWL (Web Ontology Language), or SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) as organizing frameworks, in addition to the use of many other standard ontologies such as UMBEL (subjects), FOAF (people), SIOC (social content), DOAP (projects), GeoNames (places) and others.

Zitgist's ontology development service first assesses client needs and the potential direct use of existing frameworks.  If they are inadequate, the preferred recourse is extension of proven frameworks.  (Re-use is a design objective.)  Lacking such, a new ontology is developed.  In all cases actual ontology use iterates through this cycle to refine the production version.

Zitgist matches this development perspective with real-world understanding of data "dirtiness", functional interoperability, and performance at scale.

Ontology development is often the key to a quality Linked Data conversion project.  For further information, contact Zitgist for a consultation on your particular needs.