Ontology-driven system
type: DefinedTerm
description: A system whose semantics and behavior are driven by ontology artifacts beyond just RDF syntax snapshots.

Source code for meaning
type: DefinedTerm
description: A phrase for the role of an ontology in defining what an organization means by customer, order, risk, product, and other core terms.
depends on: Ontology is code

Table-driven ontology pattern
type: DefinedTerm
description: A pattern where highly regular large ontologies are curated in tables and mapped to design patterns.

Vocabulary and taxonomy boundary
type: DefinedTerm
description: The distinction between vocabularies, taxonomies, and ontologies raised in the comments.

Comment by Gauransh Dhruv Tandon
type: Comment
about: Axioms with teeth
about: Compile gate
about: Vocabulary and taxonomy boundary
author: Gauransh Dhruv Tandon
comment count: 0
date created: 3h
interaction statistic: 0
parent item: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
position: 9
text: The compile step only bites if axioms have teeth; many enterprise ontologies are descriptive vocabularies in OWL clothing without constraints strict enough for a reasoner to disprove.

Query Construct Workflow
type: SoftwareSourceCode
code repository: sparql
programming language: SPARQL
target product: ontology-is-source-code-tony-seale-gpt5-chat-1.ttl
text: PREFIX ex: <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tonyseale_did-you-start-building-your-ontology-as-a-share-7463353332565356545-jY54#> PREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/> CONSTRUCT { ex:ontologyAsCode ?p ?o . ?o schema:name ?name . } WHERE { GRAPH <https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/DAV/demos/daas/ontology-is-source-code-tony-seale-gpt5-chat-1.ttl> { ex:ontologyAsCode ?p ?o . OPTIONAL { ?o schema:name ?name } } }

a3
type: Answer
text: Plain text gives ontology engineers and LLM agents access to files, diffs, branches, blame, pull requests, and review context.

Ontology
type: DefinedTerm
description: A formal graph of classes, relationships, constraints, and axioms for a domain.

Ontology Is Source Code Knowledge Graph Collection
type: TechArticle
about: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
about: Ontology
about: Ontology as code
about: Compile gate
about: Plain-text source
about: Source code for meaning
description: Generated RDF, HTML, and Markdown collection for Tony Seale's LinkedIn post about treating ontologies as governed source code.
has part: LinkedIn discussion thread
has part: Query Core Practices
has part: Query Compile Gates
has part: Query Construct Workflow
has part: Query Comment Perspectives
main entity: Why should an ontology be treated as code?
main entity: What does it mean for an ontology to compile?
main entity: Why is plain text important for ontology work?
main entity: How should an ontology be governed?
main entity: How do LLMs change ontology engineering?
mentions: Ontology is code
mentions: Governed like code
step: Move ontology definitions into source files
step: Add compile and reasoning checks
step: Review ontology changes in pull requests
step: Publish versioned ontology releases
step: Expose source and services to LLM agents

Automated ontology checks
type: DefinedTerm
description: Build checks that catch syntax errors, unsatisfiable classes, unexpected entailments, contradictions, and duplicate concepts.

a5
type: Answer
text: They increase the value of direct source access because an LLM can read, navigate, and edit ontology files like a codebase, instead of only querying an API.

Review ontology changes in pull requests
type: HowToStep
position: 3
text: Use branches, diffs, contextual comments, and approval rules for ontology changes.

Browser Use
type: SoftwareApplication
description: Browser automation used to capture visible LinkedIn post content.

Ontology is code
type: DefinedTerm
description: The central claim that an ontology is logic and source code for organizational meaning, not a database table.
has component: Ontology
has component: Compile gate
has component: Plain-text ontology source
has component: Governed like code

MCP server
type: SoftwareApplication
description: An API-based access path for tools and LLMs that should complement, not replace, direct source access.

Axioms with teeth
type: DefinedTerm
description: Strict logical axioms that allow a reasoner or compile step to disprove invalid ontology states.

Juan Sequeda
type: Person
description: Principal data strategist and researcher; commenter warning about vendors reframing themselves as ontology tools.

Gaurav Malhotra
type: Person
description: Builder of AI systems; commenter on executable ubiquitous language and typed programming models for ontology-backed data.

Why is plain text important for ontology work?
type: Question
accepted answer: a3

Comment by Nicolas Matentzoglu
type: Comment
about: Table-driven ontology pattern
about: Ontology
author: Nicolas Matentzoglu
comment count: 1
date created: 2h
interaction statistic: 0
parent item: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
position: 2
text: For huge, highly regular ontologies such as anatomy, biological traits, or chemistry, one can sometimes curate the ontology in a table and map every instance or class to a design pattern that provides the logical modelling.

Query Comment Perspectives
type: SoftwareSourceCode
code repository: sparql
programming language: SPARQL
target product: ontology-is-source-code-tony-seale-gpt5-chat-1.ttl
text: PREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/> PREFIX ex: <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tonyseale_did-you-start-building-your-ontology-as-a-share-7463353332565356545-jY54#> SELECT ?comment ?authorName ?topicName ?text WHERE { GRAPH <https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/DAV/demos/daas/ontology-is-source-code-tony-seale-gpt5-chat-1.ttl> { ex:commentThread schema:hasPart ?comment . ?comment schema:author ?author ; schema:text ?text ; schema:about ?topic . ?author schema:name ?authorName . ?topic schema:name ?topicName . } } ORDER BY ?authorName ?topicName

Gauransh Dhruv Tandon
type: Person
description: Builder and machine learning engineer; commenter on axioms needing enough strictness for compile checks to bite.

Object-relational impedance mismatch
type: DefinedTerm
description: Developer concern about persisting objects instead of rows, tables, or documents.

a4
type: Answer
text: Using the same engineering controls applied to code: branches, pull requests, reviews, automated checks, releases, and builds.

Tony Seale
type: Person
description: Author of the LinkedIn post and The Knowledge Graph Guy.

Plain-text source
type: DefinedTerm
description: Maintaining ontology definitions in files to enable diffs, branches, pull requests, blame, and source review.

Comment by Robert Sanderson
type: Comment
about: Vocabulary and taxonomy boundary
about: Ontology is code
author: Robert Sanderson
comment count: 0
date created: 14m
interaction statistic: 0
parent item: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
position: 3
text: That sounds like it should be a vocabulary or taxonomy rather than an ontology, raising the question of whether vocabularies should be treated as code as well.

Codex desktop
type: SoftwareApplication
description: Local development environment used for generation and validation.

Executable ubiquitous language
type: DefinedTerm
description: A programming model where ontology concepts become daily engineering objects and methods.

Bas van der Raadt
type: Person
description: Enterprise ontologist and CTO; commenter noting that ontology-driven systems involve more than RDF syntax.

Kingsley Uyi Idehen
type: Person
description: Founder and CEO at OpenLink Software; commenter emphasizing ontology work as a files-and-filesystem interaction pattern.

Comment by Stephen Redmond
type: Comment
about: Turtle as coding language
about: Plain-text ontology source
author: Stephen Redmond
comment count: 0
date created: 4h
interaction statistic: 0
parent item: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
position: 12
text: Turtle is the coding language of choice because it plays nicely with SDLC tools.

Ontology as code
type: DefinedTerm
description: Treating ontology source as logic-bearing code that compiles, has tests, and follows engineering governance.

Pull request review
type: DefinedTerm
description: Review workflow for ontology changes in context.

LLM-powered agents
type: DefinedTerm
description: AI agents that can generate, edit, and manage ontology files when loosely coupled with appropriate skills.

a1
type: Answer
text: Because it declares organizational meaning using formal logic, relationships, constraints, and axioms; those artifacts need compilation, review, automated checks, and release discipline.

RDF-native tooling
type: DefinedTerm
description: Tools and vendor capabilities for RDF-native authoring, storage, reasoning, and publishing.

Plain-text ontology source
type: DefinedTerm
description: Ontology files maintained as source artifacts that support diffs, branches, blame, and pull requests.
supports: Pull request review
supports: LLM-readable source

Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
type: SocialMediaPosting
about: Ontology is code
author: Tony Seale
comment count: 38
date published: 2026-05-22
description: Tony Seale LinkedIn post arguing that ontologies should compile, live in plain text, and be governed like source code.
has part: LinkedIn discussion thread
interaction statistic: 345
mentions: Database-table ontology anti-pattern
mentions: Compile gate
mentions: Plain-text ontology source
mentions: LLM-readable source
mentions: Governed like code
publisher: LinkedIn
text: Did you start building your ontology as a set of rows in a custom database table? The instinct is completely understandable. As software engineers we have spent our careers putting things into databases: customers, orders, events. So when the organisation says it needs an ontology, the database is the tool to hand. But please let me suggest a different way of looking at the problem. Because an ontology really is not that kind of artefact. Ontology IS Code. It is where your organisation declares what kinds of things exist, how they relate, and what cannot both be true. It is logic. It is expressive. It is a graph of interrelated concepts that build on one another. Formal logic, expressed as a set of rigorous axioms. So treat it that way. It should compile. Not just parse. Compile. The syntax should be valid. The classes should be satisfiable. The entailments should be the ones you expected. An absent entailment is a test failure, not a curiosity you discover six months later in production. If the model says two things that cannot both be true, the build should break. If a new term silently duplicates an existing concept, the build should break. It should live in plain text. You would not write your application code in a database table. You want files, diffs, branches, blame, pull requests and review in context. All of this is just as true for the classes in your ontology. It is especially true now that we have large language models in the loop. You do not only want the LLM reaching for your ontology through an API or an MCP server. You want it to read, navigate and edit the source directly, exactly the way it works with a codebase. It should be governed like code. Branches. Pull requests. Reviews. Automated checks. Releases. Builds. None of this needs inventing. Your engineering organisation already does all of it, often for code that carries far less conceptual weight. The artefact that decides what your organisation means by a customer, an order, a risk, a product …

URIBurner resolver
type: WebAPI
description: Resolver and SPARQL endpoint used for entity description and live queries.

Add compile and reasoning checks
type: HowToStep
position: 2
text: Validate syntax, class satisfiability, expected entailments, contradictions, and duplicate concept risks in CI.

Comment by Bas van der Raadt
type: Comment
about: Ontology-driven system
about: Ontology is code
about: RDF notation tradeoffs
author: Bas van der Raadt
comment count: 0
date created: 2h
interaction statistic: 0
parent item: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
position: 10
text: Ontology as code involves more than producing and processing RDF syntax; an ontology-driven system has more involved and snapshot-based approaches are only part of the story.

Stephen Redmond
type: Person
description: Founder at Straitéis AI; commenter describing Turtle as a coding language aligned with SDLC tools.

Comment by Veronika Heimsbakk
type: Comment
about: Table-driven ontology pattern
about: Plain-text ontology source
author: Veronika Heimsbakk
comment count: 0
date created: 4h
interaction statistic: 11
parent item: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
position: 11
text: If an ontology is in tables, it can be moved into code and iterated from there.

Satisfiable classes
type: DefinedTerm
description: Ontology classes that can have possible instances without logical contradiction.

How do LLMs change ontology engineering?
type: Question
accepted answer: a5

How should an ontology be governed?
type: Question
accepted answer: a4

Robert Sanderson
type: Person
description: Digital cultural heritage leader at Yale University; commenter distinguishing vocabulary, taxonomy, and ontology as code.

Compile gate
type: DefinedTerm
description: A validation gate where ontology syntax, satisfiability, entailments, contradiction checks, and duplicate concept checks must pass.
tests: Satisfiable classes
tests: Expected entailments
tests: Automated ontology checks

What does it mean for an ontology to compile?
type: Question
accepted answer: a2

LLM-readable source
type: DefinedTerm
description: A design principle where large language models can read, navigate, and edit ontology source directly like a codebase.
contrasts with: MCP server

Database-table ontology anti-pattern
type: DefinedTerm
description: Modeling an ontology as rows in a custom table, losing code review, diffs, compilation, and formal reasoning.
contrasts with: Plain-text ontology source

Robert Schneider
type: Person
description: Co-founder at FlexVertex; commenter asking about object persistence and object-relational impedance mismatch.

Expose source and services to LLM agents
type: HowToStep
position: 5
text: Let LLMs navigate source files directly while also providing APIs, MCP tools, SPARQL endpoints, and documentation.

Comment by Kingsley Uyi Idehen
type: Comment
about: Files-and-filesystem pattern
about: RDF notation tradeoffs
about: LLM-powered agents
about: Folder-to-quad-store binding
author: Kingsley Uyi Idehen
comment count: 8
date created: 11m
interaction statistic: 0
parent item: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
position: 1
text: Yes! The creation and management of ontologies, and even instance data, is a classic files-and-filesystem interaction pattern. Before LLMs this was difficult because RDF notations had tradeoffs: Turtle was human-readable but lacked tooling support, JSON-LD had more tooling support but was less readable, and RDF/XML was challenged on both fronts. Today, the Semantic Web stack gels naturally with LLMs and AI Agents. An agent can express a conceptualization in the notation you prefer and save it to a file; on suitable platforms those files can be copied to a folder transparently bound to a backend RDF DBMS for updating the triple or quad store.

a2
type: Answer
text: It means syntax is valid, classes are satisfiable, expected entailments are present, contradictions fail the build, and duplicate concepts are detected before release.

Comment by Veronika Heimsbakk
type: Comment
about: RDF-native tooling
about: Ontology is code
author: Veronika Heimsbakk
comment count: 0
date created: 4h
interaction statistic: 3
parent item: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
position: 5
text: An overview of RDF-native tooling and what major vendors support is relevant to the ontology-as-code discussion.

Comment by Juan Sequeda
type: Comment
about: Ontology-tool vendor reframing risk
about: Ontology
author: Juan Sequeda
comment count: 1
date created: 4h
interaction statistic: 13
parent item: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
position: 4
text: This is why everyone should be careful with new tools and vendors that are now reframing themselves as ontology tools.

Query Core Practices
type: SoftwareSourceCode
code repository: sparql
programming language: SPARQL
target product: ontology-is-source-code-tony-seale-gpt5-chat-1.ttl
text: PREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/> PREFIX ex: <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tonyseale_did-you-start-building-your-ontology-as-a-share-7463353332565356545-jY54#> SELECT ?practice ?name ?description WHERE { GRAPH <https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/DAV/demos/daas/ontology-is-source-code-tony-seale-gpt5-chat-1.ttl> { ex:ontologyAsCode ex:hasComponent ?practice . ?practice schema:name ?name ; schema:description ?description . } } ORDER BY ?name

LinkedIn
type: SoftwareApplication
description: Publishing platform and source location for the social post.

Ontology technical debt
type: DefinedTerm
description: The gap between an ontology codebase's current engineering quality and the value the organization can derive from AI.

Nicolas Matentzoglu
type: Person
description: Independent consultant in semantic technology and knowledge engineering; commenter on large regular ontologies curated from tables.

OpenLink Virtuoso
type: SoftwareApplication
description: RDF database and Linked Data server behind URIBurner.

RDF notation tradeoffs
type: DefinedTerm
description: Differences among Turtle, JSON-LD, and RDF/XML in human readability and tooling support.

rdf-infographic-skill
type: SoftwareApplication
description: Skill used for RDF-backed HTML and Markdown generation.

Move ontology definitions into source files
type: HowToStep
position: 1
text: Use RDF/Turtle, OWL, SHACL, or another text-based ontology source format that supports version control.

Compile gate
type: DefinedTerm
description: Automated validation that catches invalid syntax, unsatisfiable classes, missing entailments, contradictions, and duplicates.

Comment by Andrea Mazzoni
type: Comment
about: Ontology technical debt
about: Governed like code
author: Andrea Mazzoni
comment count: 0
date created: 4h
interaction statistic: 0
parent item: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
position: 8
text: The technical debt of the ontology codebase and associated DevOps measures the gap between current state and the value a company can derive from AI.

Governed like code
type: DefinedTerm
description: Ontology governance using branches, pull requests, reviews, automated checks, releases, and builds.
supports: Pull request review
supports: Automated ontology checks

Publish versioned ontology releases
type: HowToStep
position: 4
text: Package, tag, and document ontology releases so downstream systems and agents know which meaning contract they use.

Comment by Gaurav Malhotra
type: Comment
about: Executable ubiquitous language
about: Compile gate
about: Plain-text ontology source
about: Governed like code
author: Gaurav Malhotra
comment count: 0
date created: 2h
interaction statistic: 1
parent item: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
position: 7
text: Ontology should not hide in an EAV table. It should compile, diff, branch, and fail CI when meaning breaks. The real test is executable ubiquitous language rather than a semantic artifact only specialists maintain.

Why should an ontology be treated as code?
type: Question
accepted answer: a1

Folder-to-quad-store binding
type: DefinedTerm
description: A platform pattern where files copied to a folder update a backend RDF DBMS triple or quad store.

Veronika Heimsbakk
type: Person
description: Knowledge graph specialist; commenter pointing to RDF-native tooling and table-to-code workflows.

gpt5-chat
type: SoftwareApplication
description: LLM interface used to generate this collection.

Turtle as coding language
type: DefinedTerm
description: The view that RDF Turtle fits SDLC-oriented ontology engineering because it works well with code tools.

Comment by Robert Schneider
type: Comment
about: Object-relational impedance mismatch
about: Database-table ontology anti-pattern
author: Robert Schneider
comment count: 0
date created: 4h
interaction statistic: 1
parent item: Did you start building your ontology as rows in a custom database table?
position: 6
text: A question about developers trying to eliminate object-relational impedance mismatch by persisting data as objects instead of rows in tables or documents.

kg-generator
type: SoftwareApplication
description: Skill used for RDF generation.

Files-and-filesystem pattern
type: DefinedTerm
description: Kingsley Idehen's framing of ontology and instance-data management as a classic source-file workflow.

LinkedIn discussion thread
type: CreativeWork
about: Files-and-filesystem pattern
about: RDF notation tradeoffs
about: LLM-powered agents
about: Folder-to-quad-store binding
about: Table-driven ontology pattern
about: Ontology
about: Vocabulary and taxonomy boundary
about: Ontology is code
about: Ontology-tool vendor reframing risk
about: RDF-native tooling
about: Object-relational impedance mismatch
about: Database-table ontology anti-pattern
about: Executable ubiquitous language
about: Compile gate
about: Plain-text ontology source
about: Governed like code
about: Ontology technical debt
about: Axioms with teeth
about: Ontology-driven system
about: Turtle as coding language
description: Visible LinkedIn comments captured from the source post, starting with Kingsley Uyi Idehen's comment.
has part: Comment by Kingsley Uyi Idehen
has part: Comment by Nicolas Matentzoglu
has part: Comment by Robert Sanderson
has part: Comment by Juan Sequeda
has part: Comment by Veronika Heimsbakk
has part: Comment by Robert Schneider
has part: Comment by Gaurav Malhotra
has part: Comment by Andrea Mazzoni
has part: Comment by Gauransh Dhruv Tandon
has part: Comment by Bas van der Raadt
has part: Comment by Stephen Redmond

Andrea Mazzoni
type: Person
description: Chief data officer; commenter linking ontology codebase technical debt to AI value realization.

Query Compile Gates
type: SoftwareSourceCode
code repository: sparql
programming language: SPARQL
target product: ontology-is-source-code-tony-seale-gpt5-chat-1.ttl
text: PREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/> PREFIX ex: <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tonyseale_did-you-start-building-your-ontology-as-a-share-7463353332565356545-jY54#> SELECT ?check ?name ?description WHERE { GRAPH <https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/DAV/demos/daas/ontology-is-source-code-tony-seale-gpt5-chat-1.ttl> { ex:compileGate ex:tests ?check . ?check schema:name ?name ; schema:description ?description . } } ORDER BY ?name

Ontology
type: DefinedTerm
description: A formal graph of interrelated concepts, relationships, constraints, and axioms.

Ontology-tool vendor reframing risk
type: DefinedTerm
description: Risk that new tools or vendors reposition themselves as ontology tooling without adequate semantic rigor.

Source code for meaning
type: DefinedTerm
description: The role of ontology as the formal source for what organizational concepts mean.

Expected entailments
type: DefinedTerm
description: Inferences that the ontology should produce and that can be tested like build expectations.