Taxonomy

Taxonomy (in the context of information technology)

A taxonomy is both a theoretical and a practical aspect of classifying objects and concepts and contains strict and logical rules. The term “taxonomy” is derived from Linnaeus, who created a hierarchical taxonomy of living organisms in the eighteenth century.

The concept of taxonomy comes from the Greek words taxis, meaning system, and nomos, meaning order. In English, it means a method of grouping different things.

In information management, we define taxonomy as a tool containing terms stored in a dictionary controlled within a specific hierarchy. Users benefit from the possibility of grouping terms related to relationships, making it easier to find the proper time to create object descriptions (indexing) when searching for them. Taxonomies support user actions by describing concepts. From the metadata point of view, there is no difference between a simple controlled dictionary and a taxonomy. Metadata associates object with ideas, while taxonomies organise these concepts into hierarchical structures.

In IT, we talk more often about classification or clustering. WordPress taxonomy is the way to group entries. You can do this in many ways, as WordPress provides two taxonomies we can use and the ability to add any number of our own. Apart from WordPress, we also use the term taxonomy in the case of search engines.