TL;DR
- 01A schema describes how to store data. An ontology describes how to argue about the world.
- 02Conflating them produces yet another JSON standard and no shared grammar.
- 03The ACO is an ontology that happens to serialise cleanly; the substance is the typed distinctions, not the field list.
A schema describes how to store data. An ontology describes how to argue about the world. Conflating the two produces yet another JSON standard and no shared grammar.
Schema vs ontology
- ▸Schema: structural — fields, types, constraints. Tells you how to store data.
- ▸Ontology: substantive — distinctions, roles, relations. Tells you how to argue about the world.
- ▸Both are needed. Conflating them is the failure mode.
What this means for migration
Importing the ACO into an existing system is not a drop-in migration. You can map the fields easily; you cannot map the distinctions if the original data model never recorded them. A CRM entry that labelled every statement as a "claim" loses the commitment information the moment it is ingested, because the distinction was never captured in the first place. Migration is retroactively impossible.
When you extend the ACO
Ask whether you are adding a *distinction* (ontological) or a *field* (schema-level). Every time someone adds a "field" without meaning to, the grammar weakens by one step. Data models encode what their builders consider real. We would like our implicit claims to at least be visible.
SOURCES
