The entire data processing world breaks down into two mutually exclusive camps: those who do the work and those who talk about it. The first group knows, at least for the present time, it's all about 1s and 0s–ons and offs–and the rest is window dressing. The second camp, composed of IT journalists, consultants, and some corporate IT types, knows it's all about the buzz. They are word meisters who love to use three-letter acronyms and spin yarns about new paradigms. From this group we get terminologies such as service-oriented architecture, n-tier architecture, governance, and taxonomy. They love to co-opt words and terms from other disciplines and give them new life in the IT world. They can speak for 20 minutes about absolutely nothing and still blow the socks off the board of directors. Every so often, though, one of their buzzwords actually makes some sense and deserves a second look. This month we'll take a look at taxonomies.

For me, the word taxonomy conjures up memories of a biology class where life forms were classified according to their domain, kingdom, phylum (or is it phyla?) class, order, family genus, and species. They were given a Latin name based on the preceding classifications and then forevermore were assigned their place in the grand scheme of life.

If we loosely define a taxonomy as a hierarchical structure that can be used to classify or categorize things, then the scientific organization of organisms described above is undoubtedly a solid, well-designed taxonomy. The problem is even though it may be well designed, it's not particularly useful unless your name is Linnaeus. Even when I was immersed in this stuff, it was all Greek to me . . . or should I say Latin?