What are the differences between a vocabulary, a taxonomy, a thesaurus, an ontology, and a meta-model?
“Taxonomies and thesauri may relate terms in a controlled vocabulary via parent-child and associative relationships, but do not contain explicit grammar rules to constrain how to use controlled vocabulary terms to express (model) something meaningful within a domain of interest. A meta-model is an ontology used by modelers. People make commitments to use a specific controlled vocabulary or ontology for a domain of interest.” (Johannes Ernst – MetaModel) – courtesy of xblog