Ontologien in den historischen Wissenschaften
Leif Scheuermann · Social Science Open Access Repository (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) · 2006
Databases are for historians a mighty tool, especiallyfor the statistical analysis of huge qualities of data.But the tool can only work with a solid data structure that isdefined on a meta-level. To guarantee this structure, computerscientists developed for most different scopes ontologies– the topic of the following elementary article. Afterthe definition of ontologies as formal defined systems ofconcepts and relations with rules of inference and integrity,a special vocabulary for entities and relations and conditionsof completeness and correctness of the terms, the followingarticle will introduce the basic concepts of a specificontology – CIDOC CRM (Comité International pour laDocumentation Conceptual Reference Model). The fundamentalterms Entities and Properties will be explained aswell as their structure and their underlying rules.