46 terms defined

Semantic AI Glossary

The authoritative reference for semantic AI terminology. Every term defined with depth, context, and real-world examples.

Core Infrastructure

Semantic Layer

A business abstraction that defines the meaning of data for AI and analytics systems.

Read definition →4 related
Core Infrastructure

Ontology

A formal representation of knowledge as a set of concepts, entities, and their relationships.

Read definition →4 related
Core Infrastructure

Knowledge Graph

A network of entities and their semantic relationships, enabling machines to understand context.

Read definition →4 related
AI Applications

Semantic Search

Search that understands the meaning and intent behind a query, not just keyword matching.

Read definition →4 related
AI Foundations

Vector Embeddings

Numerical representations of text, images, or data that capture semantic meaning in high-dimensional space.

Read definition →4 related
AI Architecture

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

An AI architecture that grounds language model responses in retrieved, factual documents.

Read definition →4 related
AI Standards

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

An open standard for connecting AI models to external data sources and tools with semantic context.

Read definition →4 related
AI Foundations

Semantic Similarity

A measure of how alike two pieces of text are in meaning, regardless of exact wording.

Read definition →4 related
Data Governance

Semantic Drift

The gradual change in the meaning of a term or data definition across systems or over time.

Read definition →4 related
Data Engineering

Entity Resolution

The process of identifying and linking records that refer to the same real-world entity across datasets.

Read definition →4 related
Data Architecture

Data Fabric

An architecture that provides unified, intelligent data access across distributed, heterogeneous environments.

Read definition →4 related
AI Applications

Semantic SQL

An extension of SQL that allows querying data using business concepts rather than raw table structures.

Read definition →4 related
Data Governance

Ontology Alignment

The process of finding correspondences between concepts in different ontologies to enable interoperability.

Read definition →4 related
Data Governance

Semantic Fragmentation

The proliferation of incompatible semantic definitions across an organization's data systems.

Read definition →4 related
Infrastructure

Triple Store

A specialized database for storing and querying RDF triples — the building blocks of knowledge graphs.

Read definition →4 related
Standards & Languages

SPARQL

The standard query language for retrieving and manipulating data stored in RDF format.

Read definition →4 related
Standards & Languages

RDF (Resource Description Framework)

The W3C standard data model for representing information as subject-predicate-object triples.

Read definition →4 related
Standards & Languages

OWL (Web Ontology Language)

The W3C standard language for defining rich, expressive ontologies with logical reasoning capabilities.

Read definition →4 related
AI Applications

Named Entity Recognition (NER)

An NLP task that identifies and classifies named entities — people, organizations, locations — in text.

Read definition →4 related
Data Governance

Semantic Interoperability

The ability of systems to exchange data and preserve the meaning of that data across boundaries.

Read definition →4 related
Core Infrastructure

Semantic Web

Tim Berners-Lee's vision of a web where data is machine-readable and universally linked by meaning.

Read definition →5 related
Standards & Languages

Linked Data

A set of best practices for publishing structured data on the web so it can be interconnected and queried.

Read definition →4 related
Standards & Languages

JSON-LD

A JSON-based format for encoding Linked Data, enabling semantic annotations in web pages and APIs.

Read definition →4 related
Standards & Languages

Schema.org

A collaborative vocabulary for structured data markup on web pages, supported by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

Read definition →4 related
Infrastructure

Vector Database

A database optimized for storing and querying high-dimensional vector embeddings at scale.

Read definition →4 related
AI Architecture

Semantic Caching

A caching strategy that stores and retrieves AI responses based on semantic similarity rather than exact query matching.

Read definition →4 related
AI Foundations

Knowledge Graph Embedding

Techniques for representing knowledge graph entities and relations as dense vectors for machine learning.

Read definition →4 related
Data Engineering

Semantic Annotation

The process of tagging text or data with references to formal ontologies to make meaning machine-readable.

Read definition →4 related
Data Architecture

Data Mesh

A decentralized data architecture where domain teams own and serve their data as products.

Read definition →4 related
Data Governance

Semantic Versioning for Data

A system for managing changes to data schemas and definitions using meaningful version numbers.

Read definition →4 related
AI Foundations

Neurosymbolic AI

AI systems that combine neural network learning with symbolic reasoning for more reliable, explainable intelligence.

Read definition →4 related
AI Applications

Semantic Role Labeling

An NLP task that identifies the semantic roles of words in a sentence — who did what to whom.

Read definition →4 related
AI Foundations

Word Sense Disambiguation

The NLP task of determining which meaning of a word is intended in a given context.

Read definition →4 related
AI Applications

Semantic Parsing

Converting natural language into formal, machine-executable representations like SQL, SPARQL, or logical forms.

Read definition →4 related
AI Architecture

Concept Drift

The phenomenon where the statistical properties of a target variable change over time, degrading ML model performance.

Read definition →4 related
AI Architecture

Semantic Re-ranking

A two-stage retrieval technique that uses a cross-encoder to re-score and reorder initial search results for precision.

Read definition →4 related
AI Architecture

GraphRAG

An advanced RAG architecture that uses knowledge graphs to improve retrieval accuracy and multi-hop reasoning.

Read definition →4 related
AI Architecture

Semantic Kernel

Microsoft's open-source SDK for building AI agents that combine LLMs with semantic plugins and memory.

Read definition →4 related
Data Governance

Controlled Vocabulary

A curated, standardized set of terms used to index, catalog, and retrieve information consistently.

Read definition →4 related
Core Infrastructure

Semantic Technology

A family of technologies — RDF, OWL, SPARQL, ontologies — that enable machines to understand meaning.

Read definition →6 related
AI Foundations

AI Hallucination

When an AI model generates confident, plausible-sounding but factually incorrect or fabricated information.

Read definition →4 related
Core Infrastructure

Semantic Layer Federation

The practice of connecting multiple semantic layers across systems into a unified, queryable semantic fabric.

Read definition →4 related
AI Applications

Text-to-SQL

AI technology that converts natural language questions into SQL queries for database retrieval.

Read definition →4 related
AI Architecture

Semantic Memory

An AI memory system that stores and retrieves information based on meaning and semantic similarity.

Read definition →4 related
AI Foundations

Knowledge Representation

The field of AI concerned with how to formally encode knowledge so machines can reason with it.

Read definition →4 related
AI Applications

Semantic UI/UX

Design principles that use meaningful, consistent language and structure to make interfaces more intuitive.

Read definition →3 related