As I've shown in my blog, the concept of taxonomies is not new. Biology classifies life forms into a taxonomy, libraries organize books by taxonomy, addresses are taxonomies, as are diagnostic criteria. So why is it suddenly such a big deal, especially in the SharePoint space?
If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that I consider SharePoint to be an architectural layer and not an application. It is a virtual program environment that is replacing Windows over the long-term. When things can be organized according to physical location, then their location becomes the organizing principle for their use, naming conventions and structure. When we take away physical constraints then we have to create logical organizing principles to keep our various designs and solutions integrated. In the computer world the people who work with logical organizing principles are called "Architects." It is their job to make sure all the stuff in the computing environment integrates and works in concert.
Well, one of the major things SharePoint brings us is a virtual "super folder" rather than the old non-virtualized dumb folders we have come to know and love. The older folders were physically defined and organized, but the new folders are logical--they are not tied to physical structures, locations or organizing principles. So the logical organizing principles we use to manage them fall along taxonomy lines. Logical folders relate to each other through relationships, inheritance and logical connections.
To make a long story short, SharePoint bakes things like the ability to work with taxonomies into the "DNA" of every single folder in the environment. So, if you deploy a taxonomy database of every mailing address in North America into SharePoint, then (and here is the amazing part) every single super folder (i.e. Library) knows the mailing address taxonomy. the same is true for other taxonomies as well. Medical terminology and diagnostic criteria can conceivably be deployed so they are inherited throughout the environment as well.
The tricky bit comes in making use of inheritance and taxonomy structures to deploy business policies that govern how different kinds of information 'behaves.' That is where the "Verb Taxonomy" otherwise known as the "Policy Taxonomy" comes into play. You also want to have the various SharePoint Sites, Lists and Folders inherit security information, approvals, audiences, workflows and the like through the same mechanism.
The combination of inherited taxonomies of nouns and verbs is very powerful when guiding your employees and customers during their use of SharePoint. It isn't necessary to lock SharePoint down, SharePoint can provide strategic guidance while the knowledge worker is free to operate with tactical freedom. This is because the nouns and verbs can be deployed to become part of the "DNA" of all the relevant SharePoint Sites, Libraries and Lists.
©Copyright Mark Ragar Schneider, 2009 All Rights Reserved
