Ontology for AI retrieval
An ontology says what the topics in a body of knowledge are and how they relate: which are kinds of others, what is part of what, which steps come in which order, and what must be understood or done before something else. Retrieval that ignores this answers with a step out of order, or skips the check a step depends on.
In MOCA, the ontology is an optional layer of the package: a small RDF
file, structure.ttl, with each page bound to the topics it covers. Every
Reader answers questions about it the same way, can limit a search to one
topic, and can add what a result requires. It is the “Ontology” in Modular
Ontology, Content & Attestation.
A small core everyone agrees on
Section titled “A small core everyone agrees on”Readers understand a deliberately small set of W3C SKOS and Dublin Core terms, so every Reader reaches the same answer:
| Idea | Terms |
|---|---|
| Topics and their names | skos:Concept, skos:prefLabel, skos:definition |
| Kinds and subtopics | skos:broader, skos:narrower |
| Related topics | skos:related |
| Parts | dcterms:hasPart, dcterms:isPartOf |
| Order | skos:OrderedCollection, skos:memberList |
| Prerequisites | dcterms:requires, dcterms:isRequiredBy |
| Replacements | dcterms:replaces, owl:deprecated |
Any other vocabulary travels too. The same file can carry OWL, SHACL, PROV-O, or your own domain terms. Readers ignore what they do not understand; it stays in the package, covered by the digest, for applications that do.
What it does for retrieval
Section titled “What it does for retrieval”- Structure questions with one right answer. What does notifying customers require? What are the steps, in order? Which pages cover this topic and its parts? Every Reader answers identically, and the conformance corpus tests it.
- Search within a topic.
scopelimits a search to one concept and everything under it. - Ontology-guided retrieval. Pluggable hooks run before and after search. The default strategy narrows a search to a topic the question names, and adds the pages each result requires, tagged so an application can show them as “do this first”. A domain can supply its own strategy, for example for law, procedures or courses (write your own hooks).
- Your own rules on top. An application or organisation can add concepts and prerequisites as an overlay, without changing the signed package. Every answer says which layer stated it.
requires describes; it never enforces. Whether a person may see a step
depends on what they have done, which only the application knows.
Where it pays off
Section titled “Where it pays off”Procedures and manuals (steps and checks), regulations (clauses and cross-references), clinical pathways (tests before treatments), and courses (modules and prerequisites). A flat FAQ does not need one.
See it
Section titled “See it”- The structure guide writes, checks and uses an ontology, with code in TypeScript, .NET and Python.
- Try OpenMOCA shows the FAA’s Airplane Flying Handbook with a 72-concept ontology: each topic shows what it builds on.
- Package spec §5.6 has every rule.