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A taxonomy is a way of organizing things into useful and convenient classes. Each class can then be treated as an abstraction of the individual elements. For example, Dog is a class of Animal. Once an individual entity is classified as a Dog, generalizations can be made about what to expect from that individual entity.

There can be many taxonomies that classify entities. In the above taxonomy, there is a class called Dog, however, the class can also be part of a different taxonomies such as role where the dog can be classified as “pet” or “working” and within working it can be further classified a herding, guard, or tracking.

For example, one taxonomic classification places an individual in the animal kingdom; however, another taxonomy classifies an individual according to their state of employment (working, retired, etc.). Each is valid; the only difference is perspective.

The DIDO RA employs the following taxonomies: