Introducing Shades Of Gray Into The Black And White World Of Data Modeling

The world of traditional information technology is black or white. If something isn’t the same, then it is different. Every new distinction requires the creation of a new table. This creates a problem because once a new table is created the concept is considered new and unique from every other concept, causing redundancy and confusion. In the semantic world, shades of grey are tolerated. Once you formally define a concept, the semantic model creates a ‘web of similarity’ enabling the inference engine to associate the new concept to other classes that are similar. Queries are able to search not only for explicit information defined in the black and white world, but also for the ‘grey’ information found in the inferred subclasses. This enables users to ask much simpler questions and get much more complete information in return.

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