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I have recently started working with semantic web and linked data technologies, I have been always confused about one thing though. What is the difference between an Ontology and a vocabulary? Which is preferable?
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An ontology is similar to a taxonomy in that it is also a means of describing a knowledge domain. An ontology uses a controlled vocabulary or concept identifier to formally represent concepts that describe objects and the relations among them.
An entity ontologically depends on another entity if the first entity cannot exist without the second entity. Ontologically independent entities, on the other hand, can exist all by themselves. For example, the surface of an apple cannot exist without the apple and so depends on it ontologically.
Indeed, these are two different things: semantics is a fields. It studies the meaning of languages (Wikipedia has a nice definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics#Computer_science). Ontologies are representation of the knowledge (also see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)).
According to Bob Bater , “an ontology identifies and distinguishes concepts and their relationships; it describes content and relationships. A taxonomy formalizes the hierarchical relationships among concepts and specifies the term to be used to refer to each; it prescribes structure and terminology.”
I hold it like the W3C does in their description about "Ontologies":
There is no clear division between what is referred to as “vocabularies” and “ontologies”. The trend is to use the word “ontology” for more complex, and possibly quite formal collection of terms, whereas “vocabulary” is used when such strict formalism is not necessarily used or only in a very loose sense. Vocabularies are the basic building blocks > for inference techniques on the Semantic Web.
[1] http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/ontology
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In the driest sense, a "vocabulary" is a context-less list of terms, with no defined interrelationships. "Ontology" is meatier, implying the presence of interrelationships, axioms, classes, etc.
Nevertheless, the term "vocabulary" is almost never used to mean ONLY "list of terms", unless it's under the umbrella of an ontology you're talking about. The two terms overlap quite a great deal, and IMO using the term "vocabulary" generally means an ontology which doesn't claim a rigidly formal philosophical backing.
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