In our distant past, we attempted to create wealth by turning everyday substances into gold. This was early alchemy, and ultimately it did not work. But the world has changed. Today we have a type of modern alchemy that really can create gold. We can transform voluminous text into a wealth of knowledge. Text is a common fabric of society, yet it is still challenging for our technology to make sense of text. This is where taxonomies can help. In this book, legendary Bill Inmon will introduce you to the concept of taxonomies and how they are used to simplify and understand text. We emphasise the practical aspects of taxonomies, and the subsequent usage of taxonomies as a basis for textual analytics. This book is for managers who have to deal with text, students of computer science, programmers who need to understand taxonomies, systems analysts who hope to draw business value out of a body of text, and especially those who are struggling to decode data lakes. Hopefully for those individuals (and many more), this book will serve as both an introduction to taxonomies and a guide to how taxonomies can be used to bring text into the realm of corporate decision-making. This book will introduce you to the world of taxonomies, as well as explore: Simple and complex taxonomies; Ontologies; Obtaining taxonomies; Changing taxonomies; Taxonomies and data models; Types of textual data; Textual analytics. In addition, several case studies are presented from industries as diverse as banking, call centres, and travel.
