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A glossary is a
list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those
terms. Traditionally, a glossary appears at the end of a book and includes terms
within that book which are either newly introduced or at least uncommon.
A bilingual glossary is a list of terms in one language which are defined in a
second language or glossed by synonyms (or at least near-synonyms) in another
language.
In a more general sense, a glossary contains explanations of concepts relevant
to a certain field of study or action. In this sense, the term is
contemporaneously related to ontology.
Core glossary
A core glossary is a simple glossary or defining dictionary which enables
definition of other concepts, especially for newcomers to a language or field of
study. It contains a small working vocabulary and definitions for important or
frequently encountered concepts, usually including idioms or metaphors useful in
a culture.
In computer science, a core glossary is a prerequisite to a core ontology. An
example of this is seen in SUMO.
SUMO
The Suggested Upper Merged
Ontology or SUMO is an upper ontology intended as a foundation ontology for a
variety of computer information processing systems. It was originally developed
by the Teknowledge Corporation and now is maintained by Articulate Software. It
is one candidate for the "standard upper ontology" that IEEE working group
1600.1 is working on. It can be downloaded and used freely.
SUMO concerns itself with meta-level concepts (general entities that do not
belong to a specific problem domain), and thereby would lead naturally to a
categorization scheme for encyclopedias.
SUMO was first released in December 2000. It defines a hierarchy of SUMO classes
and related rules and relationships. These are formulated in a version of the
language SUO-KIF which has a LISP-like syntax. A mapping from WordNet synsets
for nouns and verbs to SUMO classes has also been defined.
SUMO is organized for interoperability of automated reasoning engines. To
maximize compatibility, schema designers can try to assure that their naming
conventions use the same meanings as SUMO for identical words, (eg: agent,
process).
