ABSTRACT
The move toward semantic systems necessitates a transition from human retrieval of information to machine understanding. This will be characterized by a move to persisting knowledge instead of information, represented by ontologies instead of database schemas, retrieved as individual chunks of information instead of entire documents, and processed by inference rules instead of operations. Guarino, for example, advocates a central role for ontologies to play in information systems, leading to his concept of “ontology-driven information systems” (Guarino 1998, 3).
