Pragmatic semantic unification
Charles J. Petrie · IEEE Internet Computing · 2005
The term unification is meaningful only with respect to applications. A term's meaning, or semantics, is evident in its use - if the application is successful, the terms have been used correctly. Unifying academic ontologies is unification in a vacuum. The only way to know if we have done it correctly is to test whether the applications associated with the terms interoperate successfully - a notion called pragmatic semantic unification. Ontologies should refer to applications, and unification success should be tested with interoperability.