{{about, semantic equivalence of metadata, the concept in mathematical logic, Logical equivalence
In computer metadata, semantic equivalence is a declaration that two
data element
In metadata, the term data element is an atomic unit of data that has precise meaning or precise semantics. A data element has:
# An identification such as a data element name
# A clear data element definition
# One or more representation terms
...
s from different vocabularies contain data that has similar meaning. There are three types of semantic equivalence statements:
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Class
Class or The Class may refer to:
Common uses not otherwise categorized
* Class (biology), a taxonomic rank
* Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects
* Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differentl ...
or
concept
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs.
They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by ...
equivalence. A statement that two high level concepts have similar or equivalent meaning.
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Property
Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...
or
attribute
Attribute may refer to:
* Attribute (philosophy), an extrinsic property of an object
* Attribute (research), a characteristic of an object
* Grammatical modifier, in natural languages
* Attribute (computing), a specification that defines a prope ...
equivalence. A statement that two properties, descriptors or attributes of classes have similar meaning.
* Instance equivalence. A statement that two instances of data are the same or refer to the same instance.
Example
Assume that there are two organizations, each having a separate data dictionary. The first organization has a data element entry:
PersonFamilyNameThe name of a person shared with other members of their family.
and a second organization has a data dictionary with a data element with the following entry:
IndividualLastNameThe name of an individual person shared with other members of their family.
these two data elements can be considered to have the same meaning and can be marked as semantically equivalent.
See also
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Logical equivalence
In logic and mathematics, statements p and q are said to be logically equivalent if they have the same truth value in every model. The logical equivalence of p and q is sometimes expressed as p \equiv q, p :: q, \textsfpq, or p \iff q, depending o ...
Vocabulary-based transformation
In metadata, a vocabulary-based transformation (VBT) is a transformation aided by the use of a semantic equivalence statements within a controlled vocabulary.
Many organizations today require communication between two or more computers. Although ...
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Web Ontology Language
The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a family of knowledge representation languages for authoring ontologies. Ontologies are a formal way to describe taxonomies and classification networks, essentially defining the structure of knowledge for vario ...