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In computer metadata, semantic equivalence is a declaration that two data elements from different vocabularies contain data that has similar meaning. There are three types of semantic equivalence statements:

• 
  Class or concept equivalence. A statement that two high level concepts have similar or equivalent meaning.


• 
  Property or attribute equivalence. A statement that two properties, descriptors or attributes of a classes have similar meaning.


• 
  Instance equivalence. A statement that two instances of data are the same or refer to the same instance.

Example

Assume that there are two organizations, each having a separate data dictionary. The first organization has a data element entry:

 <DataElement>
 <Name>PersonFamilyName</Name>
 <Definition>The name of a person shared with other members of their family.</Definition>
 <DataElement>

and a second organization has a data dictionary with a data element with the following entry:

 <DataElement>
 <Name>IndividualLastName</Name>
 <Definition>The name of an individual person shared with other members of their family.</Definition>
 <DataElement>

these two data elements can be considered to have the same meaning and can be marked as semantically equivalent.

See also

• Logical equivalence


• Metadata


• Vocabulary-based transformation


• 
  Web Ontology Language (OWL)

References

• World Wide Web OWL Language Reference


• 
  Universal Data Element Framework Web Site Semantic Equivalency for Standards and Integrations

External links

• OWL definition of Class Equivalency


• OWL definition of Property Equivalency